Mr.---- asked me to excuse him a moment while he gave some instructions, and, without waiting for my permission, looked through a few letters, shouted a message down a speaking-tube, and then, after having arranged the fate of about half-a-dozen novels by the means of the same instrument, he sent a final message down the tube asking for my MS., only to be told that he would find it in the top right-hand drawer of his desk.
As a matter of fact, all this delay, intended to impress me and make me understand what a great thing had happened to me in having won attention from so busy a man, simply did for Mr.---- so far as I was concerned. Instead of impressing me, it gave me time to get used to the place, it gave me time to look at Mr.---- when he was not looking at me.
Then, having found the MS., he looked at me and prepared to give me his undivided attention.
[Illustration: MISS STANNARD (_From a photograph by H. S. Mendelssohn_)]
'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 75_l._, 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!'
[Illustration: 'THE TWINS'--BOOTLES AND BETTY
(_From photographs by H. S. Mendelssohn_)]
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).
