“I suppose so,” Doromea sighed. “I wish some one wanted me to come and do something,” she added, vehemently, under her breath. “Goodness knows there’s been nothing to do here, since the book’s been finished. Anne seems to be busy every minute,” she observed, aloud, “but I don’t sew or cook or row, or anything—I don’t even play the piano!” This with a gust of indignation, as some very good playing came through the window.
“It’s the book’s fault.” Michael’s voice sounded rather weary. “If I hadn’t held you to the book every minute, you might have learned these other things. But I never imagined for a moment that the publishers would reject it—it seemed so much better than the first one, so much subtler——”
“What did they say about it?” Timothy moved to where he could not see the quiver of Doromea’s lips.
“They said”—Michael repeated with the monotony of one who has gone over the lesson many times—“that they were much surprised and not a little disappointed over the decided inferiority of this book compared with the other; that I seemed to have striven for an effect rather than for a truthful portrayal of actual life. Oh, they tore it up sharply enough!” he concluded, breaking off as though the recital choked him.
“They did say,” Doromea comforted, wiping her eyes back of Michael’s cushions—“they did say there was some clever dialogue in it—you remember, Michael, where Faero talks with the rector? They mentioned that especially.”
“Yes—yes”—Michael caught at the consolation—“where she says, ‘One can be so many worse things than bad,’ and—Why, Anne said that, Doromea; funny, isn’t it? Don’t you know, when we were talking about that stable-boy who stole—the one who had been in the Reformatory? You said you thought he was the baddest boy in the world, and Anne—why, yes, of course!”
“What else did they say was especially good?” Timothy’s voice suggested, with suspicious impersonality.
“Why, farther on, the scene between the kitchenmaid and the policeman—that was a story of Gladys-Marie’s, Anne told us—awfully natural, you know, and—er—local-colorish. They like that.”
“Yes, and the bit about the ladies’ clubs.” Doromea would not allow Michael to omit anything.
“Surely, that—that was funny, you know——” Michael laughed heartily for the first time since yesterday, when the book had come back. “That was a conversation Anne had with—Doromea!” He sat all at once bolt upright in his hammock. “Every one of those things was Anne’s! Every single one of them—do you know that, Doromea?—and the publishers said they were the only clever things in the book!”