The next time Hector went to see Mr. Gillespie, that gentleman suggested that he should give a course of lectures to ladies upon English Poetry, beginning with the Anglo-Saxon poets, of whom Gillespie said he knew nothing, but would be glad to learn a great deal. He knew also, he said, some ladies in the neighborhood willing to pay a guinea each for a course of, say, half-a-dozen such lectures. They would not cost Hector much time to prepare, and would at once bring in a little money. Coleridge himself, he suggested, had done that kind of thing.
“Yes,” said Hector, “but he was Coleridge. I have nothing to say worth saying.”
“Leave your hearers to judge of that,” returned Gillespie. “Do your best, and take your chance. I promise you two pupils at least not over-critical—my wife and myself. It is amazing how little those even who imagine they love it know about English poetry.”
“But where should I find a room?” Hector still objected.
“Would not this drawing room do?” asked his friend.
“Splendidly!” answered Hector. “But what will Mrs. Gillespie say to it?”
“She and I are generally of one mind—about people, at least.”
“Then I will go home at once and set about finding what to say.”
“And I will go out at once and begin hunting you up an audience.”
Gillespie succeeded even better than he had anticipated; and there was at the first lecture a very fair gathering indeed. When it was over, the one that knew most of the subject was the young lecturer’s wife. The first course was followed by two more, the third at the request of almost all his hearers. And the result was that, before the legacy fell due, Annie had paid all their debts and had not contracted a single new one.