‘Oh, very, thank you;—and now you may begin.’
‘Yes, in a minute. I want to ask you first if you really are my only chance?’
‘Yes, absolutely your only one,’ said the small figure sitting on the box, with his hands resting on his knees. He was a clever-looking little ghost, eight or nine inches high, clean shaven, with his hair brushed back to hide an evidently increasing tendency to baldness—he was not in his first youth. He was plainly but neatly dressed, though his clothes looked a little shiny at the seams. His face was careworn and anxious in its expression, but attractive, and his manners were unobjectionable.
‘So you are my only chance, are you? May I ask where you came from?’
‘Oh, I am sent here from the “Bureau of Chances”; we have to go just wherever we are sent, you know; we haven’t any choice in the matter.’
‘Yes, of course, that stands to reason; I can readily understand no ghost of the slightest financial instinct would have chosen me to come to; I am all the more obliged for any chance at all, on any terms. It is very encouraging to have you sit there; I like it. I think I will try and do some work.’
‘Yes, I would,’ said the little Ghost, with alacrity.
The Author leaned back, and, clasping his hands behind his head, he fixed his eyes on the little Ghost, and began:
‘It is to be a story, you know—a romance. She is to be the central figure—a splendid red-haired creature, with great instincts, primeval, untrained, capacious; she is to devour the world; she can’t wait for experience; she hungers and thirsts for sensations; she is to boom through the story—no lagging, no questioning; see?’
‘Yes,’ nodded the little Ghost.