As a matter of fact, all this delay, intended to impress
Then, having found the MS., he looked at me and prepared to give me his undivided attention.
'Well,' he said, with a long breath, as if it was quite a relief to see a new face, 'I am very glad you have decided to close with our offer. We confidently expect a great success with your book. We shall have to change the title though. There's a good deal in a title.'
I replied modestly that there was a good deal in a title. 'But,' I added, 'I have not closed with your offer—on the contrary, I—— '
He looked up sharply, and he squinted worse than ever. 'Oh, I quite thought that you had definitely—— '
'Not at all,' I replied; then added a piece of information, which could not by any chance have been new to him. 'A hundred pounds is a lot of money, you know,' I remarked.
Mr.—— looked at me in a meditative fashion. 'Well, if you have not got the money,' he said rather contemptuously, 'we might make a slight reduction—say, if we brought it down to 75l., solely because our readers have spoken so highly of the story. Now look here, I will show you what our reader says—which is a favour that we don't extend to everyone, that I can tell you. Here it is!'
Probably in the whole of his somewhat chequered career as a publisher, Mr.—— never committed such a fatal mistake as by handing me the report on my history (in detail) of that very large family of boys and girls. 'Bright, crisp, racy,' it ran. 'Very unequal in parts, wants a good deal of revision, and should be entirely re-written. Would be better if the story was brought to a conclusion when the heroine first meets with the hero after the parting, as all the rest forms an anti-climax. This might be worked up into a really popular novel, especially as it is written very much in Miss—— 's style' (naming a then popular authoress whose sole merit consisted in being the most faithful imitator of the gifted founder of a very pernicious school).