“Certainly not; but I have looked at his poems, and they always remind me of one of those dialect stories in the magazines.”
Miss Jessop turned over the pages of the book which had been given her, and as she did so a name caught her attention. She remembered a problem that had troubled her when she read the book before. She cried impulsively—“Oh, Mr. Hodden, there is a question I want to ask you about this book. Was—” Here she checked herself in some confusion.
Buel, who seemed to realise the situation, smiled grimly.
“The way of the transgressor is hard,” he whispered in a tone too low for Hodden to hear.
“Isn’t it?” cordially agreed the unblushing young woman.
“What did you wish to ask me?” inquired the novelist.
“Was it the American spelling or the American piracy that made you dislike the United States?”
Mr. Hodden raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, I do not dislike the United States. I have many friends there, and see much to admire in the country. But there are some things that do not commend themselves to me, and those I ventured to touch upon lightly on one or two occasions, much to the displeasure of a section of the inhabitants—a small section, I hope.”
“Don’t you think,” ventured Buel, “that a writer should rather touch on what pleases him than on what displeases him, in writing of a foreign country?”