"The verses? No, dear, I have only a very rough draft of them, which you couldn't possibly read; and I could never read them to you—I really couldn't."
"Not to your own mother?"
He shook his head. He was also blushing; and his diffidence in the matter was not the less genuine because he was swelling all the time with private pride. Mrs. Ringrose did not press the point. The pecuniary side of the affair continued to interest her very much.
"Do you think fifty?" she said at length, with considerable obscurity; but her son knew what she was talking about.
"Fifty what?"
"Pounds!"
"For my poor little verses? You little know their length! They are only forty-two lines in all."
"Well, what of that? I am sure I have heard of such sums being given for a short poem."
"Well, they wouldn't give it for mine. Fifty shillings, more like."
"No, no. Say twenty pounds. They could never give you less."