“And it’s genuinely bad?” said Kate, working hard: you might have imagined her engaged in gathering mushrooms at so much a minute.
“The scum of literary abomination,” groaned Hugh.
“And you’re certain you’re not deceiving yourself.”
“Oh, perhaps I am,” he said swinging round, “y-y-yes, I’m pretty sure it’s good enough. Seven thousand words, K, seven thousand p-p-precious words—human nature won’t stand it, will it? Let me have another look at it.”
But now Kate was adamant.
“Good enough is not good enough for Hugh Kinross,” she said sternly and made straight off to the kitchen fire with the overflowing basket clasped firmly in her arms.
[p185]
And now Hugh heaved a sigh of relief and settled down in better heart to his work. He took out a fresh writing-block and firmly and with inspiring assurance inscribed upon it the number of his chapter.
But after regarding this effort with an uplifted look for a second or two his eye fell upon the letters beside him that Kate had laid down.
Now there is something insidiously insistent about the morning post when one is away from all the other corrupting effects of the civilization of cities.
Hugh knew perfectly well that he was trembling on the verge of his precipice when he let his eye linger upon the envelopes; he knew perfectly well that the act of opening one would send his already nearly maddened Muse clean out of the window for the rest of the morning. But yet he dallied.