Dolly calculated again. “We got two pound ten a month each from the paper, and that took all our time. Do you think it would be too much to ask five pounds?”
“Oh, I think you ought to get more than that, surely,” said Mrs. Wise. “Five pounds is very little. I think large sums are paid for books.”
“Five pounds!” ejaculated Freddie. “I say, Dolly, the cricket-ball is awful burst, you wouldn’t miss two and six out of five pounds.”
“Well, suppose I say ten pounds,” said Dolly, looking round questioningly; “perhaps it wouldn’t be too much. Ten pounds, and a copy each all round. I oughtn’t to have to buy my own book.”
“Look here,” Clif said, “he wouldn’t have bothered to ask you what value you put on it if he did not think it pretty good. I’d ask a cool fifty; he is sure to beat you down, so perhaps you’ll get twenty-five in the end.”
[300]
]“Twenty-five pounds!” Dolly said, her eyes lustrous. “Oh, but, Clif, I’m sure covers cost a lot; I don’t think they’d be able to pay twenty-five pounds to me after the covers and printing and everything.”
Ted, who had disappeared for a time, now came back with several magazines in his hand.
“I read an article in one of these about the prices authoresses get,” he said; “perhaps we can get an idea this way.”
It was Phyl who found the exact paper and the exact article; she read out the items in a voice whose excitement increased as she went along.
“Mrs. Humphrey Ward for Robert Elsmere, £10,000. Marie Corelli’s income is in the thousands, and Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett is said to have realized about £10,000 from Little Lord Fauntleroy.”