“That’s my daily allowance, two hundred words. Couldn’t sleep a wink if it were a hundred and ninety-nine. Pull myself up sharp even in the middle of a speech if I find I’m likely to make it two hundred and one.”
“How very interesting!” said Miss Bibby, scribbling hard. “A whole day, polishing two hundred words! No wonder the critics speak of your crystal style, Mr. Kinross. It reminds me of what I have read of Flaubert’s methods.”
“Then,” said Hugh dreamily, “I have a few other little methods of work, though so trivial and so essentially personal I don’t know whether you would find them worth mentioning.”
“Oh, anything, anything, Mr. Kinross, if [p106] you will be so kind,” said Miss Bibby enthusiastically.
“Well,” said Hugh, looking pensively around his work-room, “I am a man of rather curious habits. I may say my habits have become part of my nature. Certain spells are necessary to get me into proper vein for my two hundred words. For instance, my collar—you may have been surprised to find me collarless, Miss Bibby.”
Miss Bibby hastily expressed the sentiment that nothing he could do could surprise her; then saw the difficulties of the sentence, and grappled hard with it to reduce it to a polite form that should express the fact that a great author is above all the petty bonds that bind the rest of the world, and must be expected to act accordingly.
But Hugh was evidently not listening to her.
“Most authors, I believe,” he said, “when working, wear their collars in the place intended by nature—or should I say the manufacturers?—namely, around their neck. I cannot write one word until it is in the corner of the room.”
Miss Bibby made a note of the curious fact.
“And, mark you,” said Hugh impressively, “it has to be the left-hand corner, facing the door, or the charm won’t work.”