Only little Mrs. Clarence gazed at Lydia with a thoroughly uneasy eye.
“I must say,” she said with a note of aggression in her habitual whine, “I do hope you won’t put me into one of your books, Miss Raymond.”
Lydia enjoyed the attention that was bestowed upon her, even while she critically told herself that it lacked discernment.
She did not read her stories out loud to the assembled boarders, as Mrs. Bulteel had suggested, but she submitted several of them to the inspection of Margoliouth.
“They have merit, and originality,” he told her. “But your English is not good.”
Lydia held out her hand for the manuscripts without replying.
“Aha, you think that a foreigner cannot criticize English,” he said acutely, and interpreting her secret thought with perfect correctness. “But I assure you that I am right. Look! you put ‘alright’ for ‘all right’ and ‘She was very interested’ instead of ‘she was very much interested.’ And again, you have ‘under the circumstances’ for ‘in the circumstances.’ All these are common errors. Tell me, what authors do you read?”
Lydia was vague. Like the majority of readers, she chose books almost at random, because the title allured her, or because someone had said that the story was exciting.
The Greek shrugged his shoulders.
“The ideas are there,” he said, “but you must learn to express them better.”