“No,” said Josephine de Montmorenci, “I am not very well. I never am. I told you that you had better put up with seeing my sister.”
We say no more than the truth of Mr. Brown in declaring that he was now more ready than ever to do whatever might be in his power to forward the views of this young authoress. If he was interested before when he believed her to be beautiful, he was doubly interested for her now when he knew her to be a cripple;—for he had seen when she made that faint attempt to rise that her spine was twisted, and that, when she stood up, her head sank between her shoulders. “I am very glad to make your acquaintance,” he said, seating himself near her. “I should never have been satisfied without doing so.”
“It is so very good of you to come,” said Mrs. Puffle.
“Of course it is good of him,” said Josephine; “especially after the way we wrote to him. The truth is, Mr. Brown, we were at our wits’ end to catch you.”
This was an aspect of the affair which our editor certainly did not like. An attempt to deceive anybody else might have been pardonable; but deceit practised against himself was odious to him. Nevertheless, he did forgive it. The poor little creature before him had worked hard, and had done her best. To teach her to be less metaphysical in her writings, and more straightforward in her own practices, should be his care. There is something to a man inexpressibly sweet in the power of protecting the weak; and no one had ever seemed to be weaker than Josephine. “Miss de Montmorenci,” he said, “we will let bygones be bygones, and will say nothing about the letters. It is no doubt the fact that you did write the novel yourself?”
“Every word of it,” said Mrs. Puffle energetically.
“Oh, yes; I wrote it,” said Josephine.
“And you wish to have it published?”
“And you wish to get money for it?”