“Is Miss Mary in?”
“Yes, ma’am, but she is very busy.”
“Oh, she won’t mind me, I don’t mean to stay long.”
Then in rushes the aunt.
“Over your books again: my dear! You really should not overwork yourself. Writing something”; here the aunt clutches the manuscript, and looks at it vaguely.
“Well, I dare say it’s very clever, but I don’t care for this kind of thing myself. Where’s your mother? Is Jane better? Now, do tell me, do you get much for writing all that? Do you send it to the printers, or where? How interesting, and that reminds me, you that are a novelist, have you heard how shamefully Miss Baxter was treated by Captain Smith? No, well you might make something out of it.”
Here follows the anecdote, at prodigious length, and perfectly incoherent.
“Now, write that, and I shall always say I was partly the author. You really should give me a commission, you know. Well, good bye, tell your mother I called. Why, there she is, I declare. Oh, Susan, just come and hear the delightful plot for a novel that I have been giving Mary.”
And then she begins again, only further back, this time.
It is thus that the aunts of England may and do assist their nieces to fail in literature. Many and many a morning do they waste, many a promising fancy have they blighted, many a temper have they spoiled.