THE LITERARY MICROBE

“We are contagious,” Pauline announced honestly and courageously at the advent of every stranger, however interesting.

And Lynn, equally careful it has been seen, refused to hold any intercourse with the author at “Tenby” until the searching question, “Have you had whooping cough?” had been put to him.

Yet here was Hugh Kinross himself taking no precaution whatever to protect the neighbouring “Greenways” from contagion, and the result was that the literary microbe was wafted across the road in a surprisingly short space of time.

Miss Bibby certainly could not be said to be infected for the first time, though there was no doubt that since the new tenants had come to “Tenby” the disease had taken a much more aggravated form with her.

She had hitherto regarded the making of books as some occult art practised by certain persons, mostly as dead and as distant as one Shakespeare whose fame had faintly reached her.

But when there came into the unpretentious cottage across the road the actual author of a printed book that lay on a table in the drawing-room; and when this actual author was discovered on near view to be a rather stout man with a shockingly bad hat and creases all over his linen coats; and when the maid who dwelt in the same house with this actual author testified, during the course of a gossip, that he was in no wise different from other men—which is to say, he made no end of a fuss if the toast was not to his liking and threw his burnt matches down anywhere, and shouted angrily if there was no soap in the bathroom—why then, when all these things were discovered, Anna simply walked up to the store one fine afternoon and set herself up in the stock-in-trade of an author, marvelling that it had never before occurred to her to write a book.

And Miss Bibby, for all her gentleness, was too “stand-offish” for the position of listener. Anna at once rejected any idea of asking that lady to undertake the work.

But the children made a delightful audience and clamoured eagerly, the moment they reached the foot of the waterfall, for the “book” to be produced from the secret recesses of Anna’s umbrella (in which it hid itself from Miss Bibby’s eyes), and for the enthralling woes of the Lady Florentine Trelawney to be at once continued.

So it may be concluded that it was Anna who acted as the direct vehicle for the transmission of the literary infection to the children themselves.

The logic of the matter was very simple.

“It will cost us twopence each,” said Pauline calculatingly, “but we can afford it; it’s nearly the day for our sixpences again.”

“I wanted my last tuppence for some pink wool—can’t you find some paper in the house?” said Muffie on discovering that the disbursement Pauline declared necessary was for mere paper.

“No,” said Pauline firmly; “authors always have plenty of clean paper. I won’t use the half sheets Miss Bibby gives us to scribble on.”

“No, no; do let us use proper paper,” cried Lynn, who had had far too many poetic fancies nipped in the bud for want of this precious transmitting material.

So the purchases were made and the eightpennyworth of paper made a very respectable show upon the table of the summer-house, to which they had retreated to ensure privacy to themselves for the arduous undertaking.

Pauline sat at the head of the table, the others ranged almost meekly around her. Hers was a responsible position and she intended them all to realize it.

So Pauline leaned back and gave herself airs.

“I shall write my own story first,” she said, “and you are none of you to speak a word to interrupt me, or I won’t write yours at all. Max, stop scratching on the table; Muffie, don’t shuffle your feet like that, you put my vein out.” The last was a slightly tangled remark picked up from Miss Kinross who had been heard to speak of various interruptions putting her brother out of vein.

Muffie, thwarted in her desire to scratch a horse upon the surface of the table, fell to filling up a crack in it with sand scooped up from the floor and mixed, when the writing lady was not looking, to a pleasing consistency with ink.

Lynn lay face downwards on a bench and bent all her energies to composing the story that Pauline would shortly write at her dictation.

Max simply strolled to the door; the little girls might be under Pauline’s thumb, but no one expected him really to obey any one except his father.

And Muffie, suffering from her enforced inactivity, soon had the tantalizing sight of sections of his brown legs displayed through the lattice work above her head.

Scratch, scratch went Pauline’s pen—scratch, scratch along line after line. Evidently she was not troubled with any lack of ideas.

Twenty minutes, half an hour slipped away. Lynn had long since composed her tale and had fallen to playing a fairy drama at the end of her bench with bits of moss and white pebbles from the floor.

Max had tumbled twice through a hole in the lattice roof, and had on each occasion blotted Pauline’s precious MS by the precipitation of his whole body upon it.

Sore, therefore, about his knees and elbows, he had given up his lofty perch and betaken himself to his oft-essayed task of digging a hole in the ground, to reach the fire that the kindergarten governess had informed him burnt in the middle of the earth.

And Muffie now occupied the seat on the summer-house roof, and did not lose the opportunity of demonstrating to Max that girls kept their balance much better than boys.

“I’ve finished—come and listen,” cried Pauline at last.

“Wait a minte,” he cried, “I’m nearly down to the fire—oh, oh, I can feel it on my hand—I b’leeve my spade’s aginning to melt.”

But Pauline insisted on his instant attendance within doors.

“‘Once upon a time’,” she began, “‘there was a beautiful mother’.”

“As beautiful as ours?” asked Lynn.

“Beautifuller,” said Pauline.

Lynn argued the point hotly, with Muffie to back her.

“She couldn’t be,” they said.

“Yes, she could—in a book,” said Pauline. “I’m not talking about really truly, of course. But in a book they can be as lovely as lovely.”

“So is mother,” said the little girls stoutly.

“Oh, of course,” said Pauline, and her heart softening to the distant dear one, she said, “Well, ‘once ’pon a time there was a mother as beautiful as our mother, and she died’.”

“Oh, oh,” said Lynn. “Oh, I wish mamma was here. Oh, I don’t like your story a bit, Paul.”

“Who’s Emmeline?” asked Muffie.

“Oh, how stupid you are,” cried Pauline; “she’s the daughter, of course,—‘sitting in the spachius drawing-room of the castle her father strode in, and he led by the hand a very horty lady. “This is your new mother and I command you to obey her, my lady Emmeline,” he said. Emmeline fainted to the ground.

Lynn was quite moved by the story, and gulped down a sob which made Paul most gracious and grateful to her.

But Muffie sniffed. “Well, she was a silly,” she said. “Why didn’t she bang and kick on the wall like the time I hid in the cupboard and the door got shut? Every one heard me in a minute.”

“Wainscotching’s much thicker than common cupboards,” said Paul disdainfully.

“I’d have got my axe and chopped and chopped and walked light out and chopped off the woman’s head and put her down my hole,” said Max.

Then it was Lynn’s turn.

She dictated rapidly, occasionally waving her arms dramatically to heighten the effect.

“‘A key lay on the ground. The moon was up. Purple was on the mountains, and all in the valley lay the snow-white mist. Black pine trees stood in a long, long row, like the ghosts of tall soldiers. The sun was setting, and orange and purple flamed in the sky. The moon was very young and thin and was just climbing up the other side of the sky. The sun——’”

“Oh, Paul!” said Lynn, “that’s the best part. You can make such lovely pictures.”

“Go on,” said Paul.

“‘The sun was——’”

Pauline folded her arms. “I won’t write another word about the sun,” she said.

“Well, the moon—” said Lynn beseechingly. “Just say ‘the moon looked like a far-off silver boat.’”

“No,” said Paul; “you’ve said once it looked like a starved baby.”

“I didn’t,” said Lynn indignantly.

“Yes—‘young and thin,’ that’s the same thing,” said Pauline. “Now get on to something else. What about the key?”

“‘The key lay on the ground’,” said Lynn resignedly, “‘and sparkled in the darkness’.”

“Keys don’t sparkle in the darkness, but go on,” said Paul, writing away.

“This one did,” persisted the poor little authoress; “the fairies had smeared it with that phis,—phos,—oh, you know, that lovely shiny stuff we saw on the sea at night when we were in the ship.”

“I know,” shouted Max; “lat-poison, like they put down at the tables to kill the lats.”

“It wasn’t,” said Lynn angrily,—“rat-poison indeed,—it was like burning gold.”

“‘Su’nnly out of a snow-white lily stepped a beautious fairy. She had——’”

Scratch, scratch went Pauline’s pen over a couple of pages; the fairy’s eyes were described and likened to stars and other shining things; her ears, her teeth, her neck, her arms and hands were all lingeringly and lovingly enumerated and described.

Max went back disgustedly to his digging for fire.

Muffie nearly fell asleep, Pauline’s hand grew cramped, and still the fairy continued to “have” things.

“‘Her dress was of silver spider’s silk studded all over with dewdrops’,” went on Lynn, beginning now energetically upon every detail of the wardrobe of the “beautious” being.

And Pauline bore even with this, though she heaved a huge sigh of relief when from crown to shoes the entire toilette of the fairy had been dealt with.

But Lynn held her, like the ancient mariner, with a glittering eye.

“‘She was followed by six handmaidens’,” she said, “‘and the first one had——’”

But here Pauline struck. The prospect of describing six more beauteous beings and their toilettes was more than she could contemplate.

Muffie yawned.

“‘Oncepon a time’,” she said.

“Go on,” said Pauline.

“‘Oncepon a time there was’——”

“I’ve got that, be quick,” said Paul.

“‘Oncepon a time there was a—a——’” Muffie looked appealingly at Lynn.

“A fairy?” suggested Lynn.

“A little dog?” said Max who had strolled back.

“Yes, a little dog,” said Muffie gratefully.

“Go on, I’ve got that,” said Paul.

“‘Oncepon a time there was a little dog and it—it——’”

“Was really a fairy under a enchanting spell?” whispered Lynn.

But Muffie was too sleepy to rise to the occasion. She repeated her formula once more in the hope of helping herself.

“‘Oncepon a time there was a—a dog—and it—it——’”

“Barked?” said Max.

“Yes,” said Muffie thankfully. “That’s all, Paul—write it big, and it will make a lot. Le’s go and see if tea’s ready.”

“Don’t be so mean, Muffie; sit down and wait,” said Pauline. “Come on Max, darling, Paul will write yours the neatest of all. Now then.”

Max thrust his hands into his ridiculous pockets and stood with his legs well apart. He always told the same class of story though the variations were several.

“Well,” he said slowly, “‘’was a ittle boy, an’ him said to hims mover, can I go down in the deep foresh all by myself, an’ she told him no. And’”—here Max paused very impressively till he had collected the eyes of all his audience—“‘he went. An’ he walked along, an’ he walked along, an’ he walked along, an’ he met’”—another pause, calculated to thrill his listeners—“‘a snake. An’ it clawled light up him an’ it ate him all up. Evly bit of him. Escept hims legs. An’ he walked along, an’ he walked along, an’ he walked along, an’ he met a tiger. An’ e tiger eat ’em up. Evly bit of ’em. Escept hims feet. An’ he walked along, an’ he walked along, an’ he walked along, an’ he met a horsh. An’ e horsh ate ’em all up. Evly bit of ’em. An’ nofing was left. Ony hims button. An’ hims mover had no dear ittle boy left’, so there.”

Pauline opened and shut her cramped hand half a dozen times.

“Thank goodness they’re done,” she said. “Give me that piece of paper to wrap them in, Muffie, and you go and get some string, Lynn, while I write to him.”

For the final destination of the tales had long since been settled.

So it happened that Hugh Kinross, coming home from the golf links at tea-time, was greeted by a bulky newspaper parcel on his desk, and the laconic note, “Please corect our mistakes and have them made into books like yours, only nicer covers. We like red except Lynn, and she likes green. And we like gold edges and plenty of pictures, and our names at the front in big letters.”

“OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES”

“That excuse about inspiration was all very well,” said Dora, rubbing away hard at an obstinate spot on a pink silk blouse, “but I would give a good deal to know why he really went off in such a violent hurry, Bee.”

“Well, I fancy he does not get on too well with Mr. Gowan,” said Bee. “It always seemed to me when I saw them together that the one despised the other for brewing beer and the other despised the one for brewing books.”

“Why, Bee,” said the other girl admiringly, “that was almost clever. I wish I could think of that sort of thing to say.”

“Must be evil communications,” laughed Bee. “I never used to be accused of such a thing as cleverness. I must tell Mr. Kinross he’s contagious.”

Bee, with a little iron that she heated at a gas ring on her washstand, was carefully smoothing out some crumpled chiffons and ribbons.

For it was wet weather on the mountains, and in the big hotel where the Gowans were staying the two girls whom Hugh was pleased privately to call “little pets” had foregathered in Bee’s bedroom, to gossip happily and repair little ravages in their many and bewilderingly pretty toilettes.

Bee held her tiny iron against her cheek a moment to test its heat.

“You’ve accounted for every one but ourselves, Doady,” she said; “it must have been one of us, or both. That is it; he likes us both so much, and was so afraid of proposing to the wrong one, that he dashed off in a motor-car to consider the matter in solitude.”

Dora held her blouse up to the light. “I believe I’m making it worse,” she said, pensively regarding the spot. Then she poured out a little more benzine and fell to rubbing the place again.

“What shall you say if he proposes to you, Bee?”

“I haven’t quite decided,” she said thoughtfully; “I might say briskly, ‘With much pleasure, my dear Mr. Kinross.’ Or I might put my finger in my mouth and hang back a little time.”

“But you would accept him, Bee?”

“Oh, of course,” said Bee; “wouldn’t you?”

“I—I suppose so,” said Dora.

Then both girls sighed.

“I wish he hadn’t started to go bald,” Bee said pathetically.

“I wish he hadn’t started to grow stout,” Dora added.

Bee pulled herself together.

“Charlie and Graham may be stout themselves by the time they are his age,” she said.

Dora felt obliged to follow suit.

“And of course you can’t expect an author to have as much hair as—as Charlie, for instance, can you?” she said.

“Oh, Charlie, Charlie!” sighed Bee. “But what shall you say if it is you he wants, Dora?”

Dora looked absolutely nervous.

“Oh, Bee—tell me, for goodness’ sake, so I can be ready. Oh, I wish you could be there to help me, if he does. I know I shall just giggle.”

“Oh, yes, of course, Bee, you know that is what I mean,” said the younger girl; “but do tell me what to say. I should want him to understand distinctly that I couldn’t think of being married for ages. Oh, Bee, I must have a bit more fun. Don’t you feel like that?”

“Oh, yes, that’s all very well, Do,” said Bee gloomily, “but it is quite time we were engaged. It is a very serious matter and we must face it.”

They faced it, sitting side by side on the edge of the narrow hotel bed, with their pretty little feet in their high-heeled shoes dangling several inches from the ground.

“I am nineteen now,” Bee continued, “and I can see plainly if you don’t get engaged by the time you are as old as that there is very little chance for you nowadays. Look at my sisters, four of them older than I and not one of them engaged. And poor old Floss is thirty-four—though of course that’s a secret, Dora.”

“Oh, of course,” said Dora.

“Oh, Bee,” said Dora pathetically, “of course she did! Five feet! Why, I am five feet!”

Bee shook her wise head.

“If there aren’t enough six-foot men to go round you’ve got to put up with the five-foot ones,” she said inexorably. “I have quite decided that the first real man who asks me I shall accept. I don’t mean silly boys like Charlie and Graham, of course, who are only just starting their medical course and then have to buy a practice and make it pay before they can marry. Why, we should have crow’s-feet round our eyes, and thin, scraggy necks”—she passed a hand over her plump young neck—“and be left to sit out at dances, if we waited for them!”

“I—I suppose so, Bee,” said Dora faintly.

“Now, Dora!” said Bee sternly, “this won’t do. I saw you trying to hide the address on the envelope you posted this morning. You’ve written another letter to that Graham.”

“It was a very short one, Bee,” said Dora meekly.

“Well, it won’t do. Do, dear, you be guided by me and you will live to thank me,” said Beatrice.

But the marvellous product of a worldly mother and a fashionable boarding-school shook her pretty head vigorously.

“It’s every bit as serious for you, Dora,” she said. “Look at you, your father’s only a barrister, and you know you don’t get a big dress allowance, and there are lots of things you can’t go to for want of money. Then you have three sisters coming on. You owe it to them to marry early and get out of the way. If Floss had taken that man——”

“The five-foot one?”

“Yes, certainly—don’t be so frivolous, Dora—I repeat if Floss had married—he was well off and clever, and really very nice, she owns—the chances are the other three girls would have gone off early and been the heads of beautiful homes to-day instead of dragging the rounds of season after season and making me stay up at school till I simply refused point blank to keep my hair down another day.”

“There’s one thing,” she said a little more hopefully, “I’m sure it won’t be me—he talks to you a lot more, Bee.”

“That’s only because I talk a lot more to him,” said Bee, nipping the hope. “I notice he looks at you most.”

Dora gazed at herself in the glass, and the reflection of the young rounded face and the candid eyes and the pretty hair was so pleasing that the instinct of conquest braced her.

“After all, Bee,” she said more brightly, “he is really very nice. And except when you’re behind him you don’t notice he’s going bald. Perhaps he’s a man you’d get to like a good deal after you were married to him.”

“That’s what I feel,” said Bee, and added in an extremely virtuous tone, “if I didn’t I should not think of him for one minute. How girls can marry really old men or horrid men, I simply don’t know. I think it’s just disgraceful. But with Hugh Kinross it is very different and people think a lot of you if your husband’s an author and you get asked everywhere.”

She returned energetically to her chiffon and twisted it in a most artistic fashion upon a charming hat.

“It would be rather funny, Bee, after all this talk if he’d never given either of us a serious thought,” she said. “What makes you so sure?”

“Oh, lots of things,” said Miss Bee. “Look at the chocolates and things he brings us—and didn’t he make Mrs. Gowan ask us to join his party for the Caves? And look at the things he says actually to us—that quotation, for instance, when we were on the seat in the summer-house,—”

murmured Dora softly.

“Yes, and lots of things like that. A man of his age doesn’t say them as Charlie or Graham might. Love is a much more serious thing with a real man than with a boy.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” sighed Dora.

“And don’t you remember what Effie Gowan told us she had heard her mother laughing and telling her father? That when he asks after us he always says, ‘Well, how are the ducky little girls?’ Or else, ‘When are you going to bring the little pets down?’”

“And Mrs. Gowan told me privately that she really did hope Hugh would marry and that she thought a bright young wife would do him a world of good and get him out of all his old-fashioned ways. Said it meaningly, too.”

“Oh, well,” said Dora, “I had better go. It must be nearly time to dress for dinner. What are you going to wear, Bee?”

And Hugh was promptly shelved to permit of this more important point being properly discussed.

WOOING THE MUSE

“Five thousand words,” muttered Hugh, and then tilted back in the steady chair he had abstracted from the kitchen for the very purpose. Yes, this was going to be one of his good days—he willed it so. The mood was not there certainly, but then, now the finishing of the book had become a pressing necessity, the mood never was there; it was like a tantalizing butterfly that flitted a second in his face and then led him a desperate chase through a tangle of undergrowth that never ended.

Five thousand words! Yes, he could if he would. Let him brace up his sinews, summon up his blood! The mere act of battling for it hard and earnestly would probably bring the mood back—it had done so many a time ere this.

Let him read over the last chapter or so to get in touch again with his characters.

If Miss Bibby had happened in that morning she would have come to the conclusion that the eccentricity of genius led it to divert itself at times with the game of paper snowballs.

But of course, if one really wanted to know the date one looked at the plainest one had: this year it happened to be a gratis one, presented with the advertisement pamphlets of some patent medicine, and it had stood Hugh in good stead from January to now, when November’s cloud of heat clung closely to the mountains.

But Kate came in,—Kate in one of her fresh-looking pin-spot print frocks. She seemed to exhale something clean, wholesome, stimulating, though she spoke no word and only laid the morning letters down beside him and, when he looked round at her, gave him her cheery smile.

He clutched at her plump, print-covered arm.

“For the love of heaven, K,” he said, “pick all that paper up off the floor and take it away.”

Kate gave him the soothing hand-stroke that nurses keep for feverish patients.

“Of course,” she said, “certainly, straight away, old boy.” She groped about beneath his knees for the wastepaper basket that would be needed as vehicle.

Then he heard her breathing a little hard as she stooped here, there and everywhere for the snowballs.

He did not turn round, but talked during her labours.

“Yes, I remember,” said Kate, puffing and panting cheerfully about the room.

“Hurry up, old girl,” he said. “In a second I shan’t be able to restrain myself from clutching some of that stuff back.”

“And it’s genuinely bad?” said Kate, working hard: you might have imagined her engaged in gathering mushrooms at so much a minute.

“The scum of literary abomination,” groaned Hugh.

“And you’re certain you’re not deceiving yourself.”

“Oh, perhaps I am,” he said swinging round, “y-y-yes, I’m pretty sure it’s good enough. Seven thousand words, K, seven thousand p-p-precious words—human nature won’t stand it, will it? Let me have another look at it.”

But now Kate was adamant.

“Good enough is not good enough for Hugh Kinross,” she said sternly and made straight off to the kitchen fire with the overflowing basket clasped firmly in her arms.

But after regarding this effort with an uplifted look for a second or two his eye fell upon the letters beside him that Kate had laid down.

Now there is something insidiously insistent about the morning post when one is away from all the other corrupting effects of the civilization of cities.

Hugh knew perfectly well that he was trembling on the verge of his precipice when he let his eye linger upon the envelopes; he knew perfectly well that the act of opening one would send his already nearly maddened Muse clean out of the window for the rest of the morning. But yet he dallied.

He drew the little stack of envelopes towards him and tilted comfortably back while he opened them.

He owed his tailor thirteen pounds eleven and six, he discovered. He discovered that by employing the Reliance Carpet Company his Axminster carpets would be entirely freed from dust and in such a way that he need fear no microbes for his nursery.

The Mission to the Chinese of Wexford Street, and Lower George Street, would be glad of a subscription from him, he learnt.

It was quite a pleasant change to discover two people merely wanted his autograph. “Dear sir, I am collecting autographs and have 637; will you please send yours by return post as I enclose a stamp.”

“She encloses a stamp,” murmured Hugh admiringly.

The other seeker accompanied her request with a perfervid letter of praise about his work, but on the heavy autograph album that accompanied the letter he noticed Kate had had to pay tenpence deficient postage and there were no stamps enclosed for the return of the precious volume.

But it was upon the last opened missive he wasted most of his time,—possibly because it was the last and Chapter eleven looked large on the horizon again.

It was an advertisement of enamel paint and was accompanied by a most pleasing picture of a gentleman in a frock coat and a lady in a most complicated costume, delicately engaged in making “better than new,” by the aid of this enamel paint, a whole bedroom suite.

Something in the elegant négligé of the attitude of the gentleman in the frockcoat depicted pensively painting the bedstead stimulated Hugh marvellously.

He felt an insane desire to get a pot of the famous paint and set to work himself upon a similar labour.

She was about to withdraw in perfect silence, but he detained her.

“Kate,” he said.

Her most motherly look was on her face.

“What is it, dear lad?” she said, for her heart was full of futile sympathy for his straits.

“Kate,” he said yearningly. “Do you think Larkin could get me a pot of Perfect Perfection Enamel warranted to dry in ten minutes, all colours kept in stock? If I can’t enamel a bedstead this very minute I won’t answer for my reason.”

Kate walked deliberately across the room and boxed his ears.

LITERATURE IS LOW

But after half an hour’s further struggle he got up and drifted aimlessly out of the room, finally bringing up in the kitchen.

Kate was here concocting a savoury and an entrée and two or three other things for his dinner, for she had packed the depressed and depressing Ellen off to the bakers’ picnic with Anna from “Greenways” and was sole mistress of her hearth and home for the day.

Here she was when her brother found her, covered up in a spotless apron and, with sleeves rolled engagingly back over her plump white arms, energetically pounding up some anchovies. Hugh sat down heavily on the edge of the dresser.

“A writer’s a miserable beast, K,” he said dejectedly.

He took no notice of her suggestions.

“Can you deny that it is a miserable trade? A womanish sort of business? You sit twiddling your pen, your nerves so a-stretch that if a door bangs the mood shuts down on you for the day. And there’s that fellow across the road swinging away with his axe among the trees just as he has been ever since breakfast. He’ll leave off presently and boil his billy and eat his bread and cheese and have his smoke, and then back he’ll go to his work. There it is spread out straight before him, and the muscles on his arms—have you ever noticed the fellow’s muscles?—tell him that he is equal to it. Do you ever see him pacing distractedly about, wondering if the mood will come to him? Do you ever see him sitting dejectedly twiddling his axe, and rendered quite incapable because he has been interrupted at a critical time and put out of vein? I tell you, my girl, that fellow’s a man, and I’d like to go out and shake hands with him.”

“Now, why,” said Hugh addressing the rows of plates ranged beside him, “why does a woman feel it her bounden duty to clap down with a conventional remark like that every time a man lets off a little steam? Besides I deny it,—the chair is not comfortable.”

Kate gave a sidelong glance at the clock and began to chop parsley as if against time.

“No,” said Hugh, “I will not take the hint, my good woman. I hold you with my glittering eye and listen to me you shall. ‘Litteratoor is low’,—Artemus Ward says so. Worse than that it’s no longer exclusive,—Mr. Dooley maintains that it is not. Do you remember the verse and chapter, madam?”

“Something about turning Miranda into authoreen does her skirt sag,” murmured Kate.

“But, but, but,” said Kate, “you can’t have a world made up of axemen and fine soldiers. It seems to me Nature has made a use for your contemptible authors in letting them inspire others to fine deeds. Those men at Colenso, for instance,—I grant you it was a fine thing to do, to stand at attention while awaiting death. But I believe if such a thing ever could have been inquired into with the minuteness that the Psychic Research Society brings to bear upon the problems that confront it, it would have been found that something far back in the minds of one or more of the three, some fine deed in a book, some shining act witnessed on a stage, gave the cue for the act at which the civilized world thundered applause.”

“I haven’t,” said Kate stoutly. “In point of fact I truly believe that one half of our actions—especially our better ones—spring from an unconscious desire to be like or unlike some character of some book or play. Where a sincere Christian struggles desperately to live like Christ of the Great Book, the less courageous aim lower and substitute a panorama of book characters that shift with their stages of growth. Many a meanness of life is left uncommitted, not solely because it is a meanness but because it would look execrable in the pages of a novel. Why, only for being terrorized by the Old Maid of Fiction, I’d be keeping a cat and a parrot myself by this time, Hugh Kinross, and you know it.”

“And what should I be doing?” asked Hugh, amused.

Kate cogitated for a moment.

“You would have been an Egoist, only Meredith made you ashamed to be one,” she answered.

Hugh nodded approval at her hit.

“But I’m still a posturing, narrow-living ass, ain’t I?” he said, “like the rest of the writing tribe.”

“Thanks, old girl,” said Hugh, grateful for a moment. But then he soon drooped again.

“No, no, the trail of the serpent is over the artistic temperament, Kit. Look at me,—if I get into a company where I’m pointed out, monstrari digito, as Hugh Kinross, I’m bored—and no doubt show that I am.”

“Yes, I’ve often noticed that,” said Kate, who had long secretly considered this rather a noble trait in her brother’s character.

“Yes,” said Hugh pensively, “and then when I get into a company where no one knows me from Smith the chemist’s clerk, a childish resentment comes over me.”

“Good heavens!” cried Kate.

It was not Hugh’s pettiness that called forth the exclamation, but the saddening circumstance that she had put her chopped and seasoned parsley into the sweet mixture that represented the pudding.

“How,” she asked pathetically, “can I get ready to feed a lion when it gets under my feet all the time like this? Is there nothing you can do? Couldn’t you go and play wild beasts under the piano for a little time? Max and Muffie would help you growl.”

“Max and Muffie remind me of Miss Bibby, and Miss Bibby reminds me of a duty to be performed,” he said; “I’ve promised to read her story. Well, if England expects every man this day to do his duty, Australia may expect duty this day to do a man.”

Kate heard him going heavily back to his study.

AN EDITING PENCIL

And now he swept all his own work out of the way and, sitting firmly down once more upon his chair from the kitchen, spread out upon his time-be desk, Miss Bibby’s MS.

He had read it through no less than three times.

At the first reading he had laughed, indeed he had leaned back in his chair and fairly yelled with laughing.

For he could so plainly recognize his own influence, and the incongruity of it against the gentle, colourless background of the tale was in truth amusing. A more ludicrous effect could hardly have been obtained, if Miss Bibby herself, clad in the limp lavender muslin, had been encountered lashing about with a stockwhip or hurling blue metal wildly in all directions.

But it was so plain, so very plain that the woman could not write,—would never write. Her characters were paper dolls and lay on the typed sheets as flat as paper dolls. No breath of air, of motion, was in all the tale. No glint of humour, no suspicion of literary grace, not one even faintly original observation made it possible for him to hope there might be any promise of success before the woman. Stereotyped characters talking stereotyped talk and working out a thin stereotyped little plot, such was the hopeless material before him, while here and there on the dull grey of it, like patches of amazing scarlet clumsily stitched on, were cutting phrases and sardonic observations closely imitated from Liars All.

He drew the poor MS towards him again and glanced through it once more desperately.

Then he took off his coat as a signal of earnest determination and filled his pen afresh and pulled a sheaf of paper towards him and settled down to see what might be done.

Two hours later he was still battling with it. He told himself it was his expiation. He had galvanized a few of the paper dolls into something a little resembling life, had put a dash of humour here and there and in some slight degree strengthened the plot. All this by putting in slips between the pages or by writing in the margin. But it was still a sorry story.

He stood up, yawned relievedly and went to the window. “Greenways” was smiling in the sunshine now as if it had never had such a garden guest as mist.