“Toothache?” queried Letty sympathetically.
“No, Ernie.”
“Not—not dead?”
... Presently Letty, her joy somewhat damped, went tiptoeing back to Town House. It seemed appropriate to tiptoe, for though Ernie was not dead, Violet had sent him about his business. The frequent comparison between his profile and Sebastian’s, his manners and Sebastian’s, Sebastian’s ‘romantic air’—and Ernie’s, had done their fell work. And now for Letty to come rushing in with Fame in a typewritten oblong envelope, and because of it expect Violet to go capering round the dining-room,—well, it was rather too much to ask even of Real Friendship.
“You jolly well get everything,” complained Violet bitterly; “you’ve got the looks, and all the fuss made over you, and a fellow who can say all the speeches, and now you’ve got this too. And I was idiot enough to type it for you, and give old Tomkyns the page about where Jasper plots with Esmée de Courcy, instead of a letter about somebody’s insurances, and he hopping mad. You get everything.” Violet again immersed herself in the handkerchief, and Letty departed, very, very sorry, but rather resentful that having ‘everything’ she should therefore have to do without Violet. “But I understand about Ernie,” she mused, sitting down to reply to the Editress. If Sebastian had not come along, would not she, Letty, with all her advantages and prettiness, probably have drifted into a sort of engagement with Balaam Atkins? very much of the Ernie type, but older, and with slightly more jut to his jaw. And then they would all have been cosy together, and even Luke would probably not have snubbed Jinny so frequently as he did now. The advent of Sebastian had completely demoralized this corner of Turnham Green.
With an effort, Letty managed to keep the secret of her letter from the family; she wanted Sebastian to be the first to hear about it. Three days later, at tea-time, she spied him walking dejectedly up the road. She was alone in the dining-room; her mother was out, and Luke not yet home from school.
“Hurrah! we can have tea together, just us two; what a darling you are to come to-day,—and I’ve got something too frightfully exciting to tell you ... your hands are frozen; why don’t you wear gloves, you bad boy?” joyfully she welcomed him, chafed his cold fingers with her warm palms, hung about him like a solicitous kitten. But still he didn’t speak. And, just on the verge of pouring forth her great news, Letty stopped, struck by the tragedy in his face.
“Oh, what is it?” she cried piteously.
“They’ve rejected it.”
Then the pall descended upon her also. The Book. They had rejected it. There was no more to be said. And for the second time she was baffled of an elated audience for her own triumph. How dared she presume tell him of a tale accepted, when his great work had been refused.