"You beat Banagher," said Miss Dobbs. And then she suddenly exclaimed, "Look here, Mr. Harper, give me that story and I'll send it myself to the Rotunda."
Very gently and politely, but quite firmly, Mr. Harper declined to do so. But in order to appease Miss Dobbs, who was inclined to make this refusal a personal matter, he solemnly promised that he would send it to the Rotunda himself, or some other magazine.
Henry Harper took a sudden resolve that night to send the story to the home of its only true begetter, Brown's Magazine. Why he chose that periodical in preference to the Rotunda was more than he could say. It may have been a feeling of reverence for the dilapidated Volume CXLI with part of the July number missing. Some high instinct may have been at work since the gods must have some kind of machinery to help them in these matters. At least the material fact was beyond dispute. He packed the story that evening in neat brown paper, and before taking down the shutters of the shop the next morning, went out and posted it, although sure in his own mind that he was guilty of a foolish proceeding.
Still, there was a lady in the case. But when in the course of the following day Miss Dobbs looked in again, by some odd perversity she was inclined to share this view to the full. She had never heard of Brown's Magazine. The Rotunda and the Covent Garden were her stand-bys. She never read anything else. But she dared say that Brown's money would be as good as other people's, although Brown's Magazine certainly would not have the circulation of the Rotunda.
Several weeks passed. Miss Dobbs looked in now and again to ask if Mr. Harper had "had any luck." To this inquiry one invariable answer was given, and after a time Miss Dobbs seemed to lose something of her faith. Her interest in the story of Dick Smith and in Mr. Harper himself began to wane. She had said from the first that Brown's was a mistake. It should have been the Rotunda or nothing. Miss Dobbs was a firm believer in beginning at the top; in her opinion it was easier to come down than it was to go up.
When the fourth week of silence on the part of Brown's Magazine had been entered upon, she suggested that Mr. Harper should stir them up a bit. With surprising inconsequence he asked for one more week of grace. For his own part, he could not help thinking it was a good sign. Miss Dobbs did not share his view. Brown's had either mislaid the manuscript, they had not received it, or they had destroyed it; and in a state verging upon sarcasm she withdrew from the shop with the final and crushing remark, "that Mr. Harper was a rum one, and she doubted very much whether he would ever make good."
However, Miss Dobbs, in spite of her knowledge of the world, had to admit, a week later, that Mr. Harper knew more about Brown's Magazine than she did. For when she looked in on the morning of Saturday to inquire for news of the ill-fated Dick Smith she was met triumphantly with a letter which had come by the last post the previous evening.
With quite a thrill she took the letter out of its neatly embossed envelope and made an attempt to read the following:
12B, Pall Mall,
September 2.
DEAR SIR,