"'It goes on like that all the time, even after the candles are lit,' said the young man, 'and it makes me ashamed. I get no peace for it when I am not at my books. Why cannot the man do his work without making others uncomfortable?'
"Perhaps some of the company may have thought it was not a man at all, but some prisoned fairy tied to an endless task—Wizard Michael's familiar spirit, or Lord Soulis's imp Red Cap doing his master's bidding with a goose-quill.
"But it was something much more wonderful than any of these. It was the hand of Walter Scott finishing Waverley, at the rate of a volume every ten days!"
"Why did he work so hard?" demanded Hugh John, whom the appearance of fifty hands diligently writing would not have annoyed—no, not if they had all worked like sewing-machines.
"Because," I answered, "the man who wrote Waverley was beginning to have more need of money. He had bought land. He was involved in other people's misfortunes. Besides, for a long time, he had been a great poet, and now of late there had arisen a greater."
"I know," cried Sweetheart, "Lord Byron—but I don't think he was."
"Anyway Fitzjames and Roderick Dhu is ripping!" announced Hugh John, and, rising to his feet, he whistled shrill in imitation of the outlaw. It was the time to take the affairs of children at the fulness of the tide.
"I think," I ventured, "that you would like the story of Waverley if I were to tell it now. I know you will like Rob Roy. Which shall it be first?"
Then there were counter-cries of "Waverley" and "Rob Roy"—all the fury of a contested election. But Sweetheart, waiting till the brawlers were somewhat breathed, indicated the final sense of the meeting by saying quietly, "Tell us the one the hand was writing!"
