"What's she like to look at?"
"Can't say. Haven't seen her for years."
"Wait a bit. Is it somebody called Daphne Bassett?"
"Yes, yes—Daphne," he said quickly.
"Who published what's called a 'first novel' some little time ago?"
Instantly I saw that I had said something he didn't like. The blood stirred in his cheeks. He spoke roughly, impolitely. And even up to this point his manner had been curt enough.
"Why do you say it like that?" he demanded. "'First' novel, with a sneer? She wrote a novel, if that's what you mean."
Yet, though he began by glaring at me, he ended by looking uneasily away. You too may have wondered why publishers so eagerly insist that some novel or other is a really-and-truly 'first' one. Your bootmaker doesn't boast that the pair of boots he sells you is his 'first' pair, and you wouldn't eat your cook's 'first' dinner if you could help it. You may take it from me that in the ordinary course of things Derwent Rose would have been far more likely to applaud the novel that ended an ignominious career than the one that began it. Yet here he was, apparently wishing to outface me about something or other, yet at the same time unable to look me in the eye.
"There's got to be a first before there can be a second, hasn't there?" he growled. "Jessica had to have a First Prayer, didn't she? And is there such a devil of a lot of difference between one novel and another when you come to think of it—yours or mine or anybody else's?"
It was at this point that I began to watch him attentively.