"Oh my goodness," cried Roland, a blank look taking the place of his enthusiasm. "Arthur, do you know, if those horrible reviews come across my mind when I am up at Hamish's, my face goes hot with shame. I've never said a syllable about them on my own score; I shouldn't like to. When I get rich, I mean to go against the papers for injustice."
"We cannot understand it down with us," said Arthur. "On the Saturday night that William Yorke got back to Helstonleigh after attending your uncle's funeral, I met him at the station. He had the 'Snarler' with him--and told me before he'd let me open it, that it contained a most disgraceful attack on Hamish's book: in fact, on Hamish himself. Putting aside all other feeling when I read it, my astonishment was excessive."
Roland relieved his feelings by a few stamps, and it was well that the cab bottom was pretty strong. "If I could find out who the writer was, Arthur, I'd get him ducked."
"That review was followed by others, all in the same strain, just as bad as it is possible for reviews to be made."
"The wicked old reptiles!" interjected Roland.
"What struck me as being rather singular in the matter, was this," observed Arthur: "That the selfsame journals which so extravagantly and wrongly praised Gerald's work, just as extravagantly and wrongly abused Hamish's. It would seem to me that there must have been some plot afoot, to write up Gerald and write down Hamish. But how the public can submit to be misled by reviewers in this manner, and not rise against it, I cannot understand."
"If those were not the exact words of old Greatorex!" exclaimed Roland. "He read both the books and all the reviews. It was a sin and a shame, and a puzzle, he said; a humbug altogether, and he should like, for the satisfaction of his curiosity, to be behind the scenes in the performance. But what else do you think he said, Arthur?"
"I don't know."
"That the reviews and the books would find their level in the end. It was impossible, he declared, that Gerald's book could live; all the fulsome praises in Christendom could not make it: just as it was impossible for such a work as the other to be written out; it would be sure to find its way with the public eventually. Annabel told me that; and I went off the same evening to Hamish's and told him. He and old Greatorex are first rate friends."
"What did Hamish say?"