"Are you not going to play any more?" cries Maurice to the authoress.
She blushes a little.
"I was playing with him," she explains, "to keep him out of mischief till mamma comes back."
In the drawing-room we talk for a time of ordinary matters—of the allowances one must make for a child like Maurice, for instance—and gradually we drift to the subject of literature. I know literary people sufficiently well to be aware that they will talk freely—almost too freely—of their work if approached in the proper spirit.
"Are you busy just now?" I ask, with assumed carelessness, and as if I had not been preparing the question since I heard papa was out.
She looks at me, suspiciously, as authors usually do when asked such a question. They are not certain whether you are really sympathetic. However, she reads honesty in my eyes.
"Oh, well, I am doing a little thing." (They always say this.)
"A story or an article?"
"A story."