“Quite right. You will be beautiful as long as you live. Between Miss Newton, three nights’ sleep a week, and a large waist, you will be quoted to your grandchildren as a nineteenth-century Ninon de l’Enclos. But, to return to the truffles we were discussing before the tea came in—another trouble is that you are too appallingly clever for the ‘infants.’ Why do you not go into the literary set and find an author? All I have ever known are fearful bores, but they might suit you.” She put down her tea-cup. “I have it!” she exclaimed; “Ogden Cryder has just come back from Europe, and I am positive that he is the man you have been waiting for. You must meet him. I met him two or three years ago, and really, for a literary man, he was quite charming. Awfully good-looking, too.”
“He is one of the dialect fiends, is he not?” asked Hermia, languidly. “It is rather awkward meeting an author whose books you haven’t read, and I simply cannot read dialect.”
“Oh! get one or two and skim them. The thread of the story is all you want; then you can discuss the heroine with him, and insist that she ought to have done the thing he did not make her do. That will flatter him and give you a subject to start off with. An author scares me to death, and, upon the rare occasions when I meet one, I always fly at him with some reproach about the cruel way in which he treated the heroine, or ask him breathlessly to please tell me whether she and the hero are ever going to get out of their difficulties or are to remain planté là for the rest of their lives. This works off the embarrassment, you see, and after that we talk about Mrs. Blank’s best young man.”
Hermia smiled. It was difficult to imagine Miss Simms frightened, breathless, or embarrassed. She looked as if emotion had not stirred her since the days when she had shrieked in baby wrath because she could not get her chubby toes into her toothless mouth.
“Ogden Cryder might at least have something to talk about,” Hermia answered. “Perhaps it would be worth while.”
“It would, my dear. I am convinced that he is the man, and I know where you can meet him. Papa has tickets for the next meeting of the Club of Free Discussion, and I will tell him to take you. He knows Mr. Cryder, and shall have strict orders to introduce you. What is more, you will have the pleasure of hearing the lion roar for an hour before you meet him. He is to give the lecture of the evening.”
“Well,” said Hermia, “I shall be glad to go, if your father will be good enough to take me. Which of Cryder’s books shall I read up?”
“‘Cornfield Yarns’ and ‘How Uncle Zebediah sowed dat Cotton Field’ are the ones everybody talks about most. Some of the yarns are quite sweet, and the papers say—I always read the criticisms, they give the outline of the plot, and it saves an awful lot of trouble—that Uncle Zebediah is the most superb African of modern fiction. Uncle Tom has hidden his diminished head. ‘Unc. Zeb.,’ as he is familiarly called, rolls forth an amount of dialect to the square inch which none but a Cryder could manipulate. It is awful work pulling through it, but we all have to work for success in this life.”
She drew on her long, loose, tan-colored glove, pushed her bangles over it, then carefully tucked the top under her cuff. “Well, addio, Hermia mia,” she said, rising; “I will send you a note to-morrow morning and let you know if anything can possibly happen to prevent papa going on Wednesday evening. In the mean time, make up your mind to be vanquished by Ogden Cryder. He really is enchanting.”