but cocked one ear, and his eyes twinkled.

"You and your tissue, indeed! You don't think I thought she was going to jump down my throat, do you? I'd hate a girl who took me first time. I like being refused—looks well. I hope she'll refuse me three or four times more."

"If she could see you eat poached eggs in your shirt-sleeves, with all the varnish off your hair, she'd go on refusing you to the crack o' doom," retorted the old lady.

Then they went to bed, and in five minutes the rejected one was snoring comfortably.

CHAPTER IV

"Roseleaves and Lavender," Violet Walbridge's last novel, was selling pretty well, but a few days after the dinner party the author left her house about half-past eleven, mounted a No. 3 bus, settled herself in the prow and travelled down to the Strand in answer to a rather pressing invitation from her publishers.

It was a fine October morning, with a little tang in the air, so windless that some early falling leaves left their boughs with an air of doubt and travelled very slowly, almost hesitatingly, towards the earth. All the smoke went straight up into the sky, and several caged birds on the route were singing loudly outside their windows. The bus was full of people, more or less all of them of the type who made Mrs. Walbridge's public, and there were, without doubt, several girls sitting almost within reach of her who would have felt it in the nature of an adventure to meet the author of "Queenie's Promise" and "One Maid's Word." It is interesting to think that there are fewer people who would genuinely thrill at the sight of George Meredith, if he were still alive, than would thrill at having met such a writer as Violet Walbridge. But no one knew who the little, dowdily dressed woman was, and her journey to Charing Cross was uneventful. God, who gives all mercies, gave the gift of vanity, and Mrs. Walbridge, although very humble-minded, was not without her innocent share in the consoling fault. More than once she had given herself the pleasure of telling some casually met stranger who she was. Once her yearly holiday at Bexhill had been given a glow of glory by the fact that she had by chance found the chambermaid at the little hotel, engrossed to the point of imbecility in "Starlight and Moonlight." Delicately, shyly, she had made known to the girl the fact of her identity, and the reverence, almost awe, of the poor ignorant servant in meeting the author of that splendid book had made her very happy for many hours.

Another time a working man in a train had been quarrelling with his wife for the possession of a torn copy of "Aaron's Rod" (a book which Mrs. Walbridge privately considered a little strong), and as she got out of the train and the man handed her down her holdall, she had thrown the exciting information of her identity into his face and run for her life, feeling herself akin to Dickens, Miss Ethel M. Dell, Robert Louis Stevenson, and all the other great ones of the earth. But these splendid events had never been frequent, and of late years they had almost ceased to occur. And as the little lady got off the bus at Charing Cross and blundered apologetically into a tall, rosy-faced girl, who clutched The Red Magazine to her breast, she wondered wistfully if the girl would have been delighted if she had told her.

Messrs. Lubbock & Payne, publishers, had their offices in the Strand, and Mrs. Walbridge's appointment was for half-past eleven. She felt a little nervous and depressed as she went up in the lift, for Mr. Lubbock was a very imposing man, whose fine bay-windowed waistcoat always overawed her a little. However, it was probably the glory of the golden autumn day that had got on her nerves. She was always sad on such days, so she tried to look bold and successful as she passed Wheeler, the old clerk, Mr. Lubbock's right-hand man, whom she had known for a quarter of a century.

Wheeler, however, did not respond to her remarks about the weather as he had once done, and when she had waited nearly half an hour her depression had grown still greater, and she was finally ushered into the inner office with hands and feet icy with fear.

Harrison Lubbock, a large, abnormally clean-looking old gentleman, with a ruff of silky white hair round his polished scalp, greeted her kindly, but without enthusiasm.

"I've asked you to call, Mrs. Walbridge," he began at once with a pronounced glance at the clock, "on a little matter of business. Mr. Payne and I have been talking things over of late—business matters you understand—and we have come to the conclusion that there are one or two of our authors to whom a few words of advice might be of use." He paused, and she looked at him anxiously.

"I see," she said, her face growing a little paler. "I—I'm one of those authors?"

He bowed, and the soft folds of his beautifully shaved double chin dropped a little lower over his high collar.

"Yes, yes, quite so. You're a very old, shall I say, client?—of ours——"

She would have liked to reply that at that moment the word patient might be more applicable to her, but she dared not, and after a moment he went on:

"I think we may say that we are very old friends."

This was awful. She was no business woman, and she had little knowledge of the world, but even she knew that it meant danger, in an interview avowedly a business interview, when friendship was invoked. She stammered something, and he went on:

"Your books have sold—sell—very well, on the whole. We have done our best for them, and, as you know, the cost of publishing and advertising—particularly advertising—has nearly doubled since the war."

Again he paused, and this time she bowed, being afraid to say that she knew conditions were such that her percentage on sales had gone down, while the sale price of her books had gone up to seven and six. She noticed Mr. Lubbock's sleeve-links; they were new ones and very neat, of gold and platinum. How she wished she could buy a pair like that for Paul! In the old days her envy would have been for Ferdie. Mr. Lubbock cleared his throat, fitted his fat finger-tips neatly together, and began to be sprightly.

"Amazing how the output of books of fiction has increased of late years, isn't it? Dear me, I can remember when 2250 would have been considered a big output, and now there are so many good writers, so many excellent writers, Mrs. Walbridge, that we are forced by competition and market conditions to bring out nearly three times that number. I wonder if you have kept up with the new writers," he went on after a pause, "Mrs. Levett, Joan Kelly, Austen Goodheart, and so on—and Wanda Potter. Wanda Potter's last book sold over a hundred thousand."

"I haven't read any of them, I'm afraid. I've so little time——" She tried to smile and felt as if her lips were freezing.

"Just so, just so; exactly what I was saying to Payne. 'Mrs. Walbridge is a very busy woman,' I said to Payne. 'She hasn't time—she can't be expected to have time—to read all these things, so it's quite natural that—that——'" He broke off, and taking up a little bronze figure of a poodle, that served as a paper weight, he examined it carefully for a moment. "I'm sure you understand what I mean, Mrs. Walbridge," he said at last.

She was looking at the corner of his polished mahogany writing table; she was looking at two carefully jointed bits of wood, finely grained and smoothly welded together, but what she saw was "Happy House"; Ferdie and his new cedar cigar chest yawning to be filled; of an unpaid