"Yours is a delightful calling, sir," he said. "Excuse me if I speak of it. I remember reading somewhere that one should never talk to an author about his works. But I couldn't help it; we don't meet poets in some of our colonies; and your sister was kind enough to enlighten my ignorance, and tell me that you were a poet. I always thought that a charming anecdote of Wolfe reciting Gray's 'Elegy,' and telling his officers he would rather have written that than take Quebec. Ay, by Jove, and so would I!"
Mr. Blanchet had never heard of the anecdote, and had by no means any clear idea as to the identity or exploits of Wolfe. But he was anxious to know something about Heron, and therefore he was determined to be as companionable as possible.
"You must not believe all my sister says about me. She has an extravagant notion of my merits in every way."
"It must be delightful to have a sister!" Victor Heron said enthusiastically. "Do you know that I can't imagine any greater happiness for a man than to have a sister? I envy you, Mr. Blanchet."
Heron was in the peculiar position of one to whom all the family relationships present themselves in idealized form. He had never had sister or brother; and a sister now rose up in his imagination as a sort of creature compounded of a simplified Flora MacIvor and a glorified Ruth Pinch. His novel-reading in the colonies was a little old-fashioned, like many of his ideas, and his habit of frequently using the word "sir" in talking with men whom he did not know very familiarly.
Mr. Blanchet was not disposed, from his knowledge of Mary Blanchet, to hold the possession of a sister as a gift of romantic or inestimable value. To say the truth, when Victor spoke so warmly of the delight of having a sister, he too was not setting up the poetess as an ideal. He was thinking rather of Miss Grey, and what a sister she would be for a man to confide in and have always with him.
Meanwhile Herbert, with all his self-conceit, had common sense enough to know that it would not do to leave Heron to find out from others that the great poet Blanchet had yet to make his fame.
"My sister and I have been a long time separated," he said. "She lived in the country for the most part, and I had to come to London."
"Of course—the only place for a man of genius. A grand stage, Mr. Blanchet—a grand stage."
"So of course Mary is all the more inclined to make a sort of hero of me. You must not take her estimate of me, Mr. Heron. She fancies the outer world must think just as she does of everything I do. I am not a famous poet, Mr. Heron, and probably never shall be. I belong to a school which does not cultivate fame, or even popularity."