The day that followed was an anxious one. It is easy enough to get your characters, but it is awful having to fix their names. And it is simple work getting a plot, compared with the agony of dividing it up into forty chapters!
This was the task before us to-day, and we retired as before to the pier-head with pencils and paper, in order to do it beyond the sound of Aunt Sarah"s voice.
We endured agonies over the names. The hero"s name should naturally have been a judicious combination of the names of the two fellows we had in our minds" eyes. But neither "Sydrey Sproutock" nor "Hardney Hulltels" exactly pleased us. Finally we decided to call him Henry Sydney, and, strange to say, it occurred to me it would be best as a rule to speak of him by his surname, while Harry was equally strong about calling him by his Christian name. At last we agreed that when we, the authors, spoke of him it should be as Sydney, and that when the heroine or any one else mentioned his name it should be as Henry--Harry explaining that "as they"re to be kids together there won"t be anything strange in her calling him by his Christian name." The heroine, after much searching of heart, we christened Alicia Dearlove, and the villain Sarah Vixen.
The other names we made up from a local directory which we were lucky enough to stumble across in the pavilion.
Then came the formidable work of slicing up our novel into forty pieces.
We wrote the figures down the side of a long sheet of paper, and looked with something like dismay at the work we had set before us.
"Seems a lot of chapters," said Harry; "couldn"t we make it thirty?"
"Wouldn"t run to six shillings if we did," said I.
That settled it, and we set ourselves to fill up the blanks.
"Chapter the First," wrote I. "Theft of Alicia--Sorrow of her Parents-- The Organ-grinder"s Lodgings--Suspicions of the Police--The Hero in the Room underneath."
"Hold hard!" cried Harry; "that"s too much for one chapter. We shall have to make that do for four of "em, or else we shall run out in ten."
"How on earth can you make four chapters of that?" said I.
"Well, you can make `Theft of Alicia" spin out into one."
"Oh, ah! Why, all there is to say is that Aunt Sarah--I mean Mother Vixen--came across her in the square and collared her. However are you to make a dozen pages of that?"
"Oh," said Harry, "we shall have to make her call at public-houses on the way, and that sort of thing, and describe the scenery in the square, and have the nursemaid go off to see the militia band go by, and leave the baby on the seat. Bless you, it"ll spread out!"
Harry seemed to know all about it.
So we went, on with our skeleton, trotting our little foundling round town on the organ, where she witnessed with infant eyes street rows, cricket matches, bicycle races, a murder or two, and such other little incidents of life which we deemed calculated to enliven our story.
About the twelfth chapter she and our hero had already exchanged tender pa.s.sages.
In the twentieth chapter her real father and mother happen to see her in the street (she being then sixteen), and are immediately struck by her resemblance to their lost baby.
By chapter twenty-five our hero had saved the lives of his future mother and father-in-law, and had rescued the heroine, single-handed, from a Hatton Garden mob.
In the twenty-ninth chapter Aunt Sarah had committed her murder with every circ.u.mstance of brutality and unpleasantness, the victim being one of our schoolfellows whom we neither of us loved.
Then for a chapter or two there was some very active police play, interspersed with a few love scenes between the hero and heroine, who-- though it never occurred to us at the time--must have enjoyed independent means, which made it quite unnecessary for them to follow the ordinary avocations of organ-grinders.
About the thirty-fifth chapter there was to be a sudden drawing-in of threads from all quarters.
Sub-Chapter thirty-sixth was to be devoted to Sarah in the condemned cell.
Thirty-seventh--Alicia discovers her name by seeing it marked on a pocket-handkerchief she had been using at the time she was stolen.
Sub-Chapter thirty-eighth--The hero discovers his name by being told it by a solicitor who has known all about it all the time.
Sub-Chapter thirty-ninth--All comes right; everybody goes back to their mothers and fathers, and a quiet wedding ensues.
Sub-Chapter forty--Execution of Sarah. Finis.
We were tired and hungry by the time our paper was full, but we were jubilant all the same.
"Stunning fine plot!" said Harry. "If we only work it out it ought to be as good as _Nicholas Nickleby_."
"Rather! By the way, we ought to have one or two funny chaps in it to work off some of our jokes. There"s that one about the sculptor dying a horrid death, you know--because he makes faces and busts! I"d like to get that in somehow."
"All serene! That might come in in the last chapters. I"ve got the _Family Jest-Book_ at home; we might pick a few things out of that, and then settle where they come in, and work in for them as we go on."
We accordingly made a judicious selection, and having marked the initials of the character who was to bring them in against each, and also the number of the chapter in which they were to "come on," we really felt as if everything was now ready for our venture.
We went to bed early, so as to get a good night and arise fresh to our work, not, however, before we had made an expedition to the stationer"s and expended half a crown in ma.n.u.script paper, J and D pens, blotting- paper, blue-black ink, and forty small paper-fasteners.
These provided, and the servant being particularly charged to call us at five o"clock, we retired to rest, and slept with our "skeleton" under the pillow.
Sub-Chapter II.
THE PLOT THICKENS.
A grave question arose the moment we opened our eyes next morning. Who was to write the first chapter? A great deal depended on how it was done. The style of the first chapter would give tone to the whole novel, and, so to speak, show the way for all the other chapters.
"I thought," said Harry, in his suspicious off-hand way, "if you took the even numbers and I took the odd, that might do."
Might it? That would mean he would write Chapter One. I wanted to write Chapter One. On the other hand, it would mean I should have Chapter twelve, with the execution in it, which would suit me very well.
I mentioned the fact, and could see that Harry had forgotten it, for he tried hard to back out of his arrangement.
"I think you"d do the first chapter best," said he. "There"s some scenery in it, you know, and you"re more of a dab at that than I am."
But my modesty preferred the even numbers, and our novel looked very like being water-logged before she had even been launched.
A compromise was, however, arrived at. As the question of style was very important, it was decided we should _both_ write Chapter One, and then, after comparing the two attempts, arrange our further procedure accordingly.
So I with a J pen, and Harry with a D retired to opposite corners of the room and plunged headlong into the "Theft of Alicia." It was a hard morning"s work, and by the time the breakfast-bell rang we were both getting the steam up. The sight of Aunt Sarah brooding over the tea- tray had but one meaning for us, and Sister Alice"s pretty face and soft voice spoke to me only of that baby I had left in my chapter lying on the seat in the square.
"Now, little boys, are you going to play on the beach to-day?" said the villain, as the meal concluded.
"No, aunt," said Harry. "Syd and I have got some work we are doing."
"What work?" demanded Aunt Sarah.
"English composition," said Harry boldly.
And under cover of this truthful announcement we escaped.
It was midday before I laid down my pen and gathered my scattered sheets together. Harry had been done before me, but he had only written eleven sheets, so our pace was about equal.