At the first reading he had laughed, indeed he had leaned back in his chair and fairly yelled with laughing.
For he could so plainly recognize his own influence, and the incongruity of it against the gentle, colourless background of the tale was in truth amusing. A more ludicrous effect could hardly have been obtained, if Miss Bibby herself, clad in the limp lavender muslin, had been encountered lashing about with a stockwhip or hurling blue metal wildly in all directions.
But then he sobered himself with an effort and read the tale again. And this time a hopeless look settled upon his face. It would [p198] have been so pleasant, so easy to praise warmly, point out a trifling error or two and so have done with his self-imposed task.
But it was so plain, so very plain that the woman could not write,—would never write. Her characters were paper dolls and lay on the typed sheets as flat as paper dolls. No breath of air, of motion, was in all the tale. No glint of humour, no suspicion of literary grace, not one even faintly original observation made it possible for him to hope there might be any promise of success before the woman. Stereotyped characters talking stereotyped talk and working out a thin stereotyped little plot, such was the hopeless material before him, while here and there on the dull grey of it, like patches of amazing scarlet clumsily stitched on, were cutting phrases and sardonic observations closely imitated from Liars All.
He tossed the stuff aside impatiently after the second reading and shot an indignant glance through the window at “Greenways.” But “Greenways” only showed dimly through a mist that was rolling through the garden, so imagination had to call up the offending figure of the would-be authoress. And call her up it did,—kindly tender imagination! It flashed two glimpses of her before Hugh’s eyes, one as she knelt on the path and dragged at a child’s obstinate shoe biting her lips while [p199] the marauding ants ran up her own sleeves. And the other as she faced him, white-cheeked against the ruddy waratahs, and told him she “preferred to talk of the New Zealand Terraces.”
He drew the poor MS towards him again and glanced through it once more desperately.
Then he took off his coat as a signal of earnest determination and filled his pen afresh and pulled a sheaf of paper towards him and settled down to see what might be done.
Two hours later he was still battling with it. He told himself it was his expiation. He had galvanized a few of the paper dolls into something a little resembling life, had put a dash of humour here and there and in some slight degree strengthened the plot. All this by putting in slips between the pages or by writing in the margin. But it was still a sorry story.
He stood up, yawned relievedly and went to the window. “Greenways” was smiling in the sunshine now as if it had never had such a garden guest as mist.
“My dear lady,” he said—he had a habit of thinking aloud when he was alone like this—“that is not a kind action I have done you, though you will probably thank me profusely. You can’t always be edited like this, and even with all this assistance you [p200] won’t have the least idea how the thing is done. As the Snark said,