Miss Rosa Belle Vincent, however, was quite as flustered as I was. She seemed ill-at-ease and anxious to get away, which I supposed was because she had not often conversed with publishers who paid a thousand dollars cash in advance for a manuscript.
She was not at all what I had thought an author would look like. She didn't even wear glasses. If I had met her on the street I should have said: "There goes a pretty flip stenographer." She was that kind—big picture hat and high pompadour.
I was afraid she would try to run the talk into literary lines and Ibsen and Gorky, where I would have been swamped in a minute, but she didn't, and, although I had wondered how to break the subject of money when conversing with one who must be thinking of nobler things, I found she was less shy when on that subject than when talking about her book.
"Well now," I said, as soon as I had got her seated, "we have decided to buy this novel of yours. Can you recommend it as a thoroughly respectable and intellectual production?"
She said she could.
"Haven't you read it?" she asked in some surprise.
"No," I stammered. "At least, not yet. I'm going to as soon as I can find the requisite leisure. You see, we are very busy just now—very busy. But if you can vouch for the story being a first-class article—something, say, like 'The Vicar of Wakefield' or 'David Harum'—we'll take it."
"Now you're talking," she said. "And do I get the check now?"
"Wait," I said; "not so fast. I have forgotten one thing," and I saw her face fall. "We want the privilege of publishing the novel under a title of our own, and anonymously. If that is not satisfactory the deal is off."
She brightened in a moment.