He put his papers down, and waited, she was convinced, for his commission for a bridge. She took the seat that he had indicated, because she was too much embarrassed to decline it, and she immediately felt that this was going to be regarded as an additional piece of impertinence.
"I have called," she stammered—in her rehearsals she had never practised an introductory speech, and she abominated herself for the omission—"I have called, Mr.——" his name had suddenly sailed away from her—"with regard to a book I've been asked to show you by Messrs. Pattenden. If you'll allow me——"
She drew the specimen from the case and put it on the desk before him.
She was relieved to find him much less astonished than she had anticipated. He even fingered the thing tentatively, and she began to collect her wits. To take it into her hands, however, and expatiate on its merits leaf by leaf, was beyond her. She soothed her conscience by remarking it was a very nice book, really.
"It seems so," said the old gentleman. "The Album of Inventions, dear me! A new work?"
"Oh yes," she said, "new. It's quite new, it's quite a new work." She felt idiotic to keep repeating how new it was, but she could not think of anything else to say.
"Dear me!" said the old gentleman again. He appeared to be growing interested by the examination, and it looked within the regions of possibility that he might give an order. Up to that moment all her ambition had been to find herself in the street again without having been abused.
"The beauty of the work is," she said, "er—that it is so pithy. One so often wants to know something that one has forgotten about something: who thought of it, and how the other people managed before he did. I'm sure, Mr. Pattenden, that if you——"
"Hatch, madam—my name is Hatch!"
"I beg your pardon," she said—"I meant to say 'Mr. Hatch.' I was going to say that, if you care to take a copy of it, it is very cheap."