“Oh yes the introduction. There must be one. It was the introduction with all those wrong details that sold the other book.”
“You overwhelm me. I never penned the memoir with that intention.”
“If you won’t do one, Mrs. Keynes must!”
“My sister leads a busy life. I could not ask her. I will do it myself since you insist.”
“And the binding?”
“The binding,” said Mr. Pembroke coldly, “must really be left to the discretion of the publisher. We cannot be concerned with such details. Our task is purely literary.” His attention wandered. He began to fidget, and finally bent down and looked under the table. “What have we here?” he asked.
Stephen looked also, and for a moment they smiled at each other over the prostrate figure of a child, who was cuddling Mr. Pembroke’s boots. “She’s after the blacking,” he explained. “If we left her there, she’d lick them brown.”
“Indeed. Is that so very safe?”
“It never did me any harm. Come up! Your tongue’s dirty.”
“Can I—” She was understood to ask whether she could clean her tongue on a lollie.