Better, perhaps, for her that she could not hear. “I did not interrupt you, I hope,” the new-comer was saying. “You seemed rather engrossed with that little person on the sofa. But I came here on purpose to see you.”
“I hoped, too, I should see you,” she replied. “No, the girl over there is a stranger to me, Helena Campion introduced us—rather rashly, for the poor thing imagines I can help her, and I really can’t. She has to make her way in the world, and wants advice. I am sorry for her, but—I am really so busy.”
“My dear, you must not take any more burdens upon you. You really must not,” said her old friend, decidedly. “What does the girl want? She is a lady, I suppose—well educated? I might introduce her to the ‘Reasonable Help Society.’ They are increasing their staff, and she might get a small salary.”
Miss Norreys looked and felt grateful.
“It would be most good of you,” she said. “I should be glad to help her, or, indeed, any one so placed, but the little I can do is in my own line, and I am overwhelmed with applications for assistance and advice in that direction.”
Mr Montague nodded sympathisingly.
“No one would believe it,” continued Hertha, with a half-rueful smile, “I could easily spend all my time in answering letters, trying songs, listening to would-be vocalists, and where would my own work be then? Yet the service which each asks—the individual service—seems so small. But how they mount up!”
“It is the same in every department,” her friend replied. “Once your name gets before the world, people seem to think you are common property, and have no right to your own time and strength. Literary people are even more bothered than you, if that is any comfort to you. For it is not every one that can deceive him or herself into imagining they possess musical gifts, whereas everybody nowadays has a try at authorship.”
And if Hertha’s smile had been rueful, Mr Montague’s was grim.
“This girl is not musical, Heaven be praised!” Miss Norreys replied.