As for Miss Dobbs, her state of mind would be difficult to render. Just as Mr. Harper was very simple, Miss Dobbs was extremely complex. In the first place, there seemed no particular reason why she should have come into the shop at all. It may have been curiosity. Perhaps her aunt had aroused it by the statement that Mr. Rudge had "set up a nice-looking boy as wrote books," and it may have been that the bearing of the nice-looking boy gave warrant for a continuance of Miss Dobbs' friendly regard.
On the other hand, it may have been the nature of Mr. Harper's calling which inspired these punctual attentions. It certainly had possibilities. Among the friends of Miss Dobbs was a certain Mr. Albert Hobson who was reputed to earn several thousands a year by his pen. Again, it may have been the statement of her aunt that the young man "had follered the sea and had a nest-egg put by." Or again it may have been the young man himself who appealed to her. His clean simplicity of mind and of mansion may have had a morbid attraction for a complexity that was pathological. Of these hypotheses the last may seem least probable, but the motives of a Miss Cora Dobbs defy analysis; and in a world in which nothing is absolute she is perhaps entitled to the benefit of any doubt that may arise concerning them.
In spite of Miss Dobbs, whose attentions for the present were confined to a few minutes one morning a week, the story of Dick Smith began to make excellent progress. All the same it was uphill work. The Sailor was a very clumsy craftsman using the queerest of tools, but oddly enough he had a remarkable faculty of concentration.
At last came the day when the final chapter was written. And a proud day it was. In spite of many defeats and misgivings, he was able at three o'clock of a summer morning to write the magic words, "The End." Yet it was far from being the end of his labors. He little knew that he had merely come to Mount Pisgah, and that for many days he must be content with no more than a glimpse of the Promised Land.
In telling the story of his early years the Sailor had no particular object in view. Certain mysterious forces were craving expression. Such a task had not been undertaken at the call of ambition. But now it was done ambition found a part to play.
On the very morning the story was finished, by an odd chance Miss Dobbs came into the shop. In answer to her invariable, "Well, what of it?" she was gravely informed that the end had been reached.
"My! you've been going some, Mr. R. L. Stevenson. Run along and fetch the last chapter and read it to me and then I'll tell you honestly whether I think it's as good as Bert Hobson."
Miss Dobbs had the habit of command. Therefore Chapter the Last, telling of the hero's miraculous deliverance from the Island of San Pedro, was at once produced. Moreover, it was read to her with naïf sincerity in a gentle voice.
"Hot stuff!" Miss Dobbs dexterously concealed a yawn with a dingy white glove. "It's It."
The author blushed with pleasure, although he could hardly believe the story was as good as all that.