Your story has now been read twice, and the conclusion very reluctantly come to by the writer is that it would be impossible to use it in Brown's Magazine in its present form. It bears many marks of inexperience, but at the same time it has such a strikingly original quality that the writer would be very glad to have a talk with you about it. In the meantime the MS is being returned to you.
Yours very truly,
EDWARD AMBROSE.
"I don't call that writing," said Miss Dobbs, who had been utterly defeated by the hand of the editor of Brown's Magazine. "It is just a fly walking across the paper without having wiped its feet. Read it to me, Mr. Harper."
Mr. Harper, who had spent nearly an hour the previous evening in making out the letter, and now knew it by heart, enforced her respect by reading it aloud as if it had been nothing out of the common.
"Marks of inexperience!" was her comment. "Like his impudence. I wonder who he thinks he is. You take my advice, Mr. Harper, and send it to the Covent Garden. See what they've got to say about it."
However, before taking that course, Henry Harper felt it would be the part of wisdom to get in touch with the real live editor who had expressed a wish to see him. Besides, there had been something in the letter signed "Edward Ambrose" which had set a chord vibrating in his heart.
IX
In order to pay a visit to 12B, Pall Mall, Henry Harper had to ask for leave. This was readily granted by his master, who was even more impressed by the letter from the editor of Brown's Magazine than was its recipient.
As became one who had a practical acquaintance with editors and publishers, Mr. Rudge knew that for more than a century Brown's Magazine had been a Mecca of the man of letters. Great names were enshrined in its history. These began with Byron and Scott, and flowed through the Victorian epoch to the most gifted and representative minds of the present. Mr. Ambrose himself was a critic of some celebrity; moreover, Brown's Magazine was still half a crown a month as it always had been, so that even its subscribers had a sense of exclusiveness.