"I do not desire to," he said.
There was a slight hesitancy and faltering of his voice as he spoke.
"Yet it can hardly be possible that you will not meet; you will have arrangements to make with her."
"That is one of the uses, among others, of having you. All that relates to her affairs will pass through you; and now, let us talk of the magazine and its programme for the season. What is the reason, Hal, that you waste your forces in short sketches? Why do you not boldly dash out into a serial story? Come, now, I am resolved among other things on a serial story by Harry Henderson."
"And I will recommend a taking title," cried Jim Fellows, who came in as we were talking, and stood behind my chair. "Let us have
HENDERSON'S HORROR; or, The Mystery of the Bloody Latch-Key.
There's a title to take with the reflecting public! The readers of serials are generally girls from twelve to twenty, and they read them with their back-hair down, lounging on the bed, just before a nap after dinner, and there must be enough blood and thunder, and murder and adultery and mystery in them to keep the dear creatures reading at least half an hour."
"I think serial stories are about played out in our day," said I.
"Not a bit of it. There's sister Nell, don't read anything else. She is regularly running on five serial stories, and among them all they keep her nicely a-going; and she tells me that the case is the same with all the girls in her set. The knowledge of the world and of human nature that the pretty creatures get in this way is something quite astounding. Nell is at present deeply interested in a fair lady who connives with her chambermaid to pass off her illegitimate child upon her husband as his own; and we have lying and false swearing, I say nothing of all other kinds of interesting things on every page. Of course this is written as a moral lesson, and interspersed with pious reflections to teach girls as how they hadn't oughter do so and so. All this, you see, has a refining effect upon the rising generation."