I had just found a piece of paper in Miss Mander’s handwriting, and on it was written, “Selections from the nervous vocabulary of Mr. Vero-Taylor during the last hour.”
The Bittern man looked at them, and, “By Jove! these are corkers!” he said. Then I thought perhaps I ought not to have let him see them. There was Drayton, the ironmonger’s bill lying about too, and I saw him raise his eyebrows at the last item, “To one chased brass handle for coal-cellar door.”
“That’s what I call being thorough!” said The Bittern man. “I’m thorough myself. See this interview when it is done!”
He was thorough. He looked at everything, and particularly asked to see the pen George uses. “Or perhaps he uses a stylograph?” he asked.
“Mercy, no!” I screamed out. “He would have an indigestion! This is his pen—at least, it is this week’s pen. George is wasteful of pens; he eats one a week.”
“Very interesting!” said he. “Most authors have a fetish, but I never heard of their eating their fetish before. This will make a nice fat paragraph. Come on!”
You see what friends we had become! We went into the dining-room, and I showed him the dresser, with all the blue china on, and the Turkey carpet spread on it, instead of a white one—that was how they had it in the Middle Ages. He sympathized with me about how uncomfortable Mediæval was, and if it wasn’t for the honour and glory of it, how much we preferred Early Victoria, when the drawers draw, and the mirrors reflect—there’s not one looking-glass in the house that poor Ariadne can see herself in when she’s dressing to go out to a party—or chairs that will bear sitting on. Why, there are four in one room that we are forbidden to sit upon on pain of sudden death!
“Very hard lines!” said The Bittern man. “I confess that this point of view had not occurred to me. I shall give prominence to it in my article. Art, like the car of some fanatical Juggernaut, crushing its votaries——”
“Yes,” I said. “Mother draped a flower-pot once, and sneaked Ariadne’s photograph into a plush frame. You should have heard George! ‘To think that any wife of his—’ ‘Cæsar’s wife must be above suspicion!’ And as for Ariadne, he had rather see her dead at his feet than folded in blue plush.”
“Capital!” said The Bittern man. “All good grist for the interview! And now, will you show me the famous metal stairs of which I have heard so much? There are no penalties attached to that, I trust?”