“And I burnt it!” said Miss Bibby in a stricken tone. “Tossed it on the fire without a glance—I thought they were playing me a trick! Poor Pauline—I—must apologize to Pauline.”
“You can go,” said Hugh to Larkin, “and here’s a shilling to wipe the momentary slur off from your character.”
And Larkin rode off, vindicated, slapping the left-hand pocket of his trousers.
“Does it make my crime a little less brutal?” said Hugh gently.
She put out her slim white hand again.
“Let us forget about it,” she said; “I shall soon live it down.” Her eyes flashed for a moment bravely up to his.
He gripped her hand hard, shook it several times, and told her she had behaved in a manner altogether more generous than he deserved.
[p153]
“If you want to make me a little more comfortable in my own mind,” he said as he was leaving, “you will give me something to do for you. Can I—my sister tells me you write a great deal and—and have not had any very great fortune with the editors and publishers yet. Is there any MS I could read—and perhaps presume to offer a little advice upon? It would make me very happy—that is, if you have sufficient confidence in me.”
The humble, anxious note in his voice would have amazed several score of his readers who had written to him to ask him, since he was a literary man, to read through an accompanying bulky parcel of MS, advise about its faults and give hints about publishing. For these persons—anathema maranatha to all authors—received by return of post one of a large packet of printed slips that stood ever ready on Hugh’s desk, and learned briefly that “Mr. Hugh Kinross, being neither a literary agent nor a philanthropist but merely a working man with a market value on every hour, begs to repudiate the honour his correspondent would do him, and informs him that his MS will be returned on receipt of stamps to cover postage.”
Miss Bibby was not proof against this offer. She gave Hugh one look of intense gratitude and hurried into the house, returning [p154] presently with a small roll of typewritten MS—her latest creation, Hypocrites.