Bless the little man, you should have seen him when he heard that. He positively glowed all over his face, and begged and prayed of me to let him see what I’d written about him. I said he should one day, that I’d only just put down some notes at present, and that they weren’t in shape yet.
After that, he was on at me whenever he got a chance about my new “Memoirs.” “I can give you a lot of things to put in,” he said, “because I’ve lived here man and boy, and there isn’t a soul whose history I don’t know. When are you going to publish ’em, ma’am?”
“Oh,” I said, “not yet. It wouldn’t do while we’re here. A nice time I should have of it, if the people here got hold of the book, and came and asked me how I dared put them in!”
“But you aren’t going to leave here?”
“Not yet, of course; but I hope we shall have a better house some day. If we make this a good business we shall sell it, and buy another—a real hotel, perhaps, with waiters in evening dress, and all that sort of thing; but there’s plenty of time to think about that.”
Poor little Mr. Wilkins! certainly he couldn’t have taken more interest in my new work if he’d been writing it himself; and I really believe he did think he was what they call collaborating; for, after a time, whenever he brought me a bit of information, he would say, “Won’t that do for our ‘Memoirs’?”
Our “Memoirs!” It made me a little cold to him at first, because I have an authoress’s feelings; but I saw he didn’t mean any harm, and I soon forgave him, and we were the best of friends. I will acknowledge here that he was of very great service to me; and having been the parish clerk so many years, and his father before him, and having an old-established little business in the place, he had many opportunities of knowing things which I couldn’t have found out. I can say what I like of him now, because the old gentleman, at the time I am writing, is far, far away, and isn’t likely to see or hear of my book. But I must not anticipate. I shall tell you his story by-and-by in its proper place, as it happened long after this.
He certainly kept his word, and never told anybody of what he’d found out, and nobody here ever said anything to me about my “Memoirs,” except one person, and when that one person said it, it took my breath away more than Mr. Wilkins did.
I must tell you about that now, or else I shall forget it. It shows the danger of expressing your opinions too freely in a book.
We were always changing our cooks—in fact, cooks were our great difficulty; and female cooks in hotels generally are a difficulty, and even harder to manage than cooks in private families.