“That is rather the object of honest critics in such a case. Not to cause unnecessary sorrow, but: ‘To make you sorry after a proper manner, that ye may receive damage by us in nothing,’ as a powerful pen once wrote to the Gentiles. Are you going to write another romance?”
“Write another?” she said. “That somebody may pen a condemnation and ‘nail’t wi’ Scripture’ again, as you do now, Mr. Knight?”
“You may do better next time,” he said placidly: “I think you will. But I would advise you to confine yourself to domestic scenes.”
“Thank you. But never again!”
“Well, you may be right. That a young woman has taken to writing is not by any means the best thing to hear about her.”
“What is the best?”
“I prefer not to say.”
“Do you know? Then, do tell me, please.”
“Well”—(Knight was evidently changing his meaning)—“I suppose to hear that she has married.”
Elfride hesitated. “And what when she has been married?” she said at last, partly in order to withdraw her own person from the argument.