[p99]
It was December, and Hugh’s first book still wanted forty thousand words to complete it. The other two works, the play, the verses, were still in the pale nimbus that ever plays tantalizingly around an author’s desk.
It was December and the publisher was clamouring for copy. In the proud insolence begot of January’s shining possibilities and Kate’s neat memorandum, Hugh had promised his book by August.
And the long-suffering, kindly publisher, sympathetic over an author’s mood, had refrained from overmuch pressing of his claim for three months. But it was December now and he was growing restive; the MS. had to be typed, had to waste five weeks at sea, to be read in London, to be placed as advantageously as possible for serial rights in various countries, to be illustrated, to be printed, proofs had to be sent out for correction, to be returned, ten more weeks had to be lost at sea, and yet the book be published in the sacred season of autumn, nine short months hence.
The publisher was restive and Hugh desperate.
He had sworn to himself this afternoon nearly as fiercely as Pauline had that he would not leave the room until he “got it right.” Pauline was granted the relief of [p100] tears. Hugh could only give vent to his tumult of mind by tearing off his collar and hurling it into one corner of the room, peeling off his coat and flinging it under his table, and kicking off his white canvas shoes. These last he had purchased from one of the shoe-makers in the township only this morning, having neglected to put any footgear at all in his portmanteau. And being only two and elevenpence—none better were kept in stock—the shoes were badly cut and pinched him atrociously.
One at present reposed, sole upwards, on a chair where it had alighted after a vigorous aërial flight, and the other stood its ground in the middle of the floor.
And this was the manner of author Miss Bibby found herself suddenly shut up with for an interview destined for the Evening Mail!
Hugh spun round in his chair at Kate’s bland voice. He probably imagined he was in his revolving-chair at home, but he was not, and the frail article beneath him, unused to gyration upon one leg, gave way instantly and all but precipitated him at full length before his visitor.
Max, who an hour before had impugned the butcher’s impurity of language, would have found that in some respects a butcher and an author were men and brothers.