"He did not keep me long," said Hazel, mournfully, and she drew from her pocket the ill-fated manuscript, and Teddie, with incredulous horror in his eyes, read slowly: "The Victoria Cross and How it was Won," twice through before he could believe the evidence of his senses.
"The fellow will never get on," he told Hazel dispassionately. "He will come to no good end. He has not the first essentials for getting on in his particular business. He does not know a good thing when he sees it; he does not know what suits the public taste, and probably cares less. Well, I pity him."
"But his magazine is a very good one, I mean of high standing"—Hazel ventured timidly, thinking Teddie's calm not altogether natural or healthy—"and it is very well known."
"Mere luck," announced Teddie. "It won't last It can't. But I shall go and ask for an explanation," he continued, his anger rising, somewhat to his sister's relief. "He will have to satisfy me."
"He seemed rather nice, if you remember," Hazel observed, in just defence of the roundly abused editor. "That is the worst of it. If he had been, well, a disagreeable sort of man, whom you strongly suspected of being ultra-critical and ill-natured, why, then, one would try again with a light heart. But, Teddie, I cannot help thinking he would have taken it if he could."
"You either forget what I told you of the stories he has accepted, or else you have no faith in my judgment, Hazel," Teddie returned censoriously. "I can assure you he has taken all sorts of trash. I have seen it—in print."
"And you do not think mine trash?" Hazel asked doubtfully.
"No," declared the loyal Teddie, half defiantly, "I don't. And that moonlight scene after the battle, and the battle itself, if it comes to that, are just ripping."
They halted upon the roadway, Teddie to light a cigarette, Hazel to open and unfold the manuscript, to refresh her memory on the parts so highly commended. Together they stood awhile, he reading over her shoulder; but the reconsideration of her work brought the girl no comfort. Even to her youth and inexperience the story appeared crude, obviously the writing of a beginner—and a very young one, of no especial talent. Even her brother began to experience a disquieting sense of imperfection as he read on. Somehow the tale lacked the brilliancy of dramatic force that he had, on first reading, attributed to it; and for the first time he was uneasily conscious of a desire to laugh in quite the wrong places. But he was not going to discourage his sister altogether for all that, though perhaps it would be true kindness to discontinue such unqualified commendation.
"I expect your bad writing put him off," he said at length, with brotherly bluntness. "You ought to have got me or Digby or some one to write it out neatly for you."