The stranger, moving backward to the door, went out.
Tommy sat with her face between her hands. Czerny’s Exercises lay neglected.
“Anybody called?” asked Peter Hope.
“No,” answered Tommy. “Oh, just a man. Left this—not bad.”
“The old story,” mused Peter, as he unfolded the manuscript. “We all of us begin with poetry. Then we take to prose romances; poetry doesn’t pay. Finally, we write articles: ‘How to be Happy though Married,’ ‘What shall we do with our Daughters?’ It is life summarised. What is it all about?”
“Oh, the usual sort of thing,” explained Tommy. “He wants half a crown for it.”
“Poor devil! Let him have it.”
“That’s not business,” growled Tommy.
“Nobody will ever know,” said Peter. “We’ll enter it as ‘telegrams.’”
The stranger called early the next day, pocketed his half-crown, and left another manuscript—an essay. Also he left behind him his gold-handled umbrella, taking away with him instead an old alpaca thing Clodd kept in reserve for exceptionally dirty weather. Peter pronounced the essay usable.