“What a writer needs is somebody to tell him the truth.”
“Ah!” said Miss Neville, “that is another thing I am not so sure about. Mrs. Woodford has told you, I suppose, that I have read all your books? Did she add that I detested them?”
Even Streeter was not able to conceal the fact that this remark caused him some surprise. He laughed uneasily, and said:
“On the contrary, Mrs. Woodford led me to believe that you had liked them.”
The girl leaned back in her chair, and looked at him with half-closed eyes.
“Of course,” she said, “Mrs. Woodford does not know. It is not likely that I would tell her I detested your books while I asked for an introduction to you. She took it for granted that I meant to say pleasant things to you, whereas I had made up my mind to do the exact reverse. No one would be more shocked than Mrs. Woodford—unless, perhaps, it is yourself—if she knew I was going to speak frankly with you.”
“I am not shocked,” said the young man, seriously; “I recognize that there are many things in my books that are blemishes.”
“Of course you don’t mean that,” said the frank young woman; “because if you did you would not repeat the faults in book after book.”
“A man can but do his best,” said Streeter, getting annoyed in spite of himself, for no man takes kindly to the candid friend. “A man can but do his best, as Hubert said, whose grandsire drew a longbow at Hastings.”
“Yes,” returned Miss Neville, “a man can but do his best, although we should remember that the man who said that, said it just before he was defeated. What I feel is that you are not doing your best, and that you will not do your best until some objectionable person like myself has a good serious talk with you.”