Mrs. Worfolk startled the new secretary when she presented herself at 36 Church Row next day by embracing her affectionately in the hall before she had explained the reason for such a demonstration. It soon transpired, however, that Miss Hamilton's memory was as good as Mrs. Worfolk's and that she had not forgotten those jolly visits to the carpenter long ago, nor even the big yellow Tomcat. As for the master of the house, he raised his housekeeper's salary to show what importance he attached to a good memory.
For a day or two John felt shy of assigning much work to his secretary; but she soon protested that, if she was only going to type thirty to fifty lines of blank verse every other morning, she should resign her post on the ground that it was an undignified sinecure.
"What about dictating your letters? You made such a point of my knowing shorthand."
"Yes, I did, didn't I?" John agreed.
Dictation made him very nervous at first; but with a little practice he began to enjoy it, and ultimately it became something in the nature of a vice. He dictated immensely long letters to friends whose very existence he had forgotten for years, the result of which abrupt revivals of intercourse was a shower of appeals to lend money to these companions of his youth. Yet this result did not discourage him from the habit of dictating for dictation's sake, and every night before he turned over to go to sleep he used to poke about in the rubbish-heap of the past for more forgotten friends. As a set off to incommoding himself with a host of unnecessary correspondents he became meticulously businesslike, and after having neglected Miss Janet Bond for several weeks he began to write to her daily about the progress of the play, which notwithstanding his passion for dictation really was progressing at last. Indeed he worked up the manageress of the Parthenon to such a pitch of excitement that one morning she appeared suddenly at Church Row and made a dramatic entrance into the library when John, who had for the moment exhausted his list of friends, was dictating a letter to The Times about the condition of some trees on Hampstead Heath.
"I've broken in upon your inspiration," boomed Miss Bond in tones that she usually reserved for her most intensely tragic moments.
In vain did the author asseverate that he was delighted to see her; she rushed away without another word; but that evening she wrote him an ecstatic letter from her dressing-room about what it had meant to her and what it always would mean to her to think of his working like that for her.
"But we mustn't deride Janet Bond," said the author to his secretary, who was looking contemptuously at the actress's heavy caligraphy. "We must remember that she will create Joan of Arc."
"Yes, it's a pity, isn't it?" Miss Hamilton commented, dryly.
"Oh, but won't you allow that she's a great actress?"