“I do seriously so mean,” said Kate.
“Go and get me the paper,” he said.
Kate brought him the Evening Mail of two days back.
And there in black headlines he read—
“The only interview Hugh Kinross has ever granted.”
“A lady beards the lion in his den and extracts most interesting particulars.”
“The eccentricities of a great author.”
When Agnes Bibby’s neat MS. had reached the Editor of the Evening Mail that gentleman had fairly shouted with laughter, for he knew Kinross and his habits well. And this perfervid and most serious account was in truth very funny.
[p141]
He found himself quite unable to resist so unique an opportunity of raising a roar of laughter among his readers. Therefore, telling himself that Kinross had too much humour to be seriously annoyed, and holding himself protected by the well-known signature authenticating it, he had at once blue-pencilled the article and sent it precisely as it stood into the hands of the foreman printer. His twinkling eye had practically swept over without noticing the modest signature at the end of the article, “Agnes Bibby (Burunda).” Else, for the sake of Thomas downstairs, if not for the lady herself, he would have scored it through and let the laugh go against an anonymous contributor.
But things move rapidly in the office of an evening paper, and the foreman ran through the first proofs and the sub-editor through the second, and neither thought of removing that poor little name at the end.