She had worked early and late, not flagging, through all the sultry days. “You will make yourself sick,” her mother had warned, “and it will cost you all you earn to buy beef tea and pay the doctor; so where is the good of it?”
She had read her manuscript aloud to her father, and he had laughed and wiped his eyes and given sundry appreciative exclamations.
“That writing takes a precious sight of time,” her mother had remonstrated.
“That is because I am human.” Tessa had answered soberly.
“Suppose it is refused.”
“Then I’ll be like William Howitt; his book was refused four times and he stood on London bridge ready to toss it over. I do not think that I will do as Charlotte Bronte did; she sent a rejected manuscript to a publisher wrapped in the wrapper in which the first publisher had rolled it. I suppose that his address was printed on it.”
She had run on merrily as she had placed the cool, pure lilies in the vase; but her heart was sinking, nevertheless. It had always taken so little to exhilarate or depress her.
“Must you write to-day?” inquired her mother one morning in an unsatisfied tone.
“Several hours.”
“I wanted you to make calls with me and to help me with the currant jelly and to put those button-holes into my linen wrapper.”