“What book?” I said, going very red.
“Why, your ‘Memoirs,’ ma’am,” he said. “My daughter up in London, that I went to see last week—she’s a great reader, and I do believe that she has read everything, ancient and modern—and we were having a lot of conversation about you, and I was saying what a nice lady you were, and about your husband being a sailor, and one or two things I dropped made her prick up her ears, and she asked me a lot of questions, and presently she said, ‘Father, what’s Mrs. Beckett’s christian name?’ Well, of course I knew what it was, through your having written it in the visitors’ book, as you remember, when you asked me to write mine too, when it was new, and you wanted to take it up for ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ to put their names in. So I said, ‘Mrs. Beckett’s christian name, my dear, is Mary Jane.’
“‘I thought so,’ said my daughter.
“Of course I asked her why she should think your name was Mary Jane, ma’am, and then she said, ‘She’s a celebrated authoress. She’s written a book all about us (my daughter is in domestic service), and it’s the truest book I ever read about servants. It’s her “Memoirs” and all about the places she lived in, and the people she lived with. She said in the book she was going to marry Harry and have a country inn.’
“‘Harry’s the landlord’s name, right enough,’ I said; and from one or two things my daughter told me were in that book, ma’am, I’m sure I have the honour of addressing the talented authoress.”
I blushed more than ever when Mr. Wilkins said that, and I felt very uncomfortable. I never thought it would get about that I wrote books, and I felt that if it was known it might injure our business, as folks wouldn’t like to come and stay at an hotel, if they thought the landlady was studying their characters to make stories about them for print. I saw it was no good denying it, so I put a bold face on the matter, and I said, “Mr. Wilkins, it is quite true; but I want you to give me your promise you won’t say a word of what you have found out to anybody else.”
“Good gracious, ma’am!” said Mr. Wilkins. “Why should you hide your candle under a bushel? It’s a great thing to be a writing lady nowadays.”
“Yes: but I’m not a lady, Mr. Wilkins,” I said, “and I’ve my husband’s business to attend to, and I don’t want the people about here to know me as anything else but the landlady of the ‘Stretford Arms.’”
I explained to him as well as I could why it wasn’t advisable for me to be known as an authoress, especially an authoress who wrote about what she saw, and put real live people in her books; and, after a little talk, Mr. Wilkins said he saw what I meant, and he thought I was right, and he gave me his word of honour he wouldn’t breathe my secret to a soul.
After that, of course, I was obliged to take him a good deal into my confidence, and as once or twice he had seen me writing, it was no good my denying that I was at work on more “Memoirs,” and he very soon jumped to the conclusion that it was our inn and its customers, and the people in the place, that I was writing about. Then he asked me point-blank if he was in, and I said, “Yes, Mr. Wilkins; you are.”