"Yes," she said politely; "oh, yes, that was quite enough to put it out of your head." But she looked away from him.
"Then, as you know," pursued Hugh, "I have been at the Caves ever since.
But I took the precaution the moment I remembered to send you word."
Now she was looking at him. "I received no message."
"That scoundrelly young Larkin--do you say that he did not bring you a note from me?" he cried.
"No, I had no note," she said faintly. "He must have lost it or have forgotten to bring it."
"That is it," said Hugh, "but I still blame myself. I ought to have turned back when I remembered and not have trusted a lad."
"There he is now. Oh, Larkin! Larkin!" murmured Miss Bibby in the tone Sir Isaac Newton must have used when his dog Diamond did him the irreparable mischief.
Yes, there was Larkin, riding gaily off down the path to the gate, an empty basket swung on one arm. He had just received another commission from Anna--a large bottle of patent medicine and a complexion remedy, and as he had lately extended the field of his operation by acting as a sort of travelling agent (on commission) for a chemist in an adjoining village, it brought the piano and the grocery emporium a little closer.
Hugh gave a peremptory whistle and the boy looked over his shoulder, then responded to the beckon by bringing his horse sharply round and cantering briskly across to the waratahs.
"Something else, Miss Bibby, ma"am?" he said, whipping out his order book.
"What do you mean by not delivering the note I gave you from the wagonette on Thursday?" said Hugh angrily.
"I did deliver it!" said Larkin in much indignation, "which I can say honest, sir; I never neglected a message yet. And that"s why our business is what it is."
"Whom did you give it to?" said Miss Bibby. "Was it to one of the children?"
"Not much, ma"am," said Larkin, in open scorn. "I don"t do business that ways, knowin" well what kids--begging yer pardon, children are. I did hand it to the oldest of "em, certainly, but I took the precaution, Miss Bibby, ma"am, to stay at the door till I seen her hand it to you. You was standin" by the fire and I seen it _acshally in yer hand_."
"But that was no letter," said Miss Bibby, a faint recollection stealing over her, "it was one of your trade cards."
"It was on one of those I wrote," said Hugh, "having no other paper. I remember apologizing for using it."
"And I burnt it!" said Miss Bibby in a stricken tone. "Tossed it on the fire without a glance--I thought they were playing me a trick! Poor Pauline--I--must apologize to Pauline."
"You can go," said Hugh to Larkin, "and here"s a shilling to wipe the momentary slur off from your character."
And Larkin rode off, vindicated, slapping the left-hand pocket of his trousers.
"Does it make my crime a little less brutal?" said Hugh gently.
She put out her slim white hand again.
"Let us forget about it," she said; "I shall soon live it down." Her eyes flashed for a moment bravely up to his.
He gripped her hand hard, shook it several times, and told her she had behaved in a manner altogether more generous than he deserved.
"If you want to make me a little more comfortable in my own mind," he said as he was leaving, "you will give me something to do for you. Can I--my sister tells me you write a great deal and--and have not had any very great fortune with the editors and publishers yet. Is there any MS I could read--and perhaps presume to offer a little advice upon? It would make me very happy--that is, if you have sufficient confidence in me."
The humble, anxious note in his voice would have amazed several score of his readers who had written to him to ask him, since he was a literary man, to read through an accompanying bulky parcel of MS, advise about its faults and give hints about publishing. For these persons--anathema maranatha to all authors--received by return of post one of a large packet of printed slips that stood ever ready on Hugh"s desk, and learned briefly that "Mr. Hugh Kinross, being neither a literary agent nor a philanthropist but merely a working man with a market value on every hour, begs to repudiate the honour his correspondent would do him, and informs him that his MS will be returned on receipt of stamps to cover postage."
Miss Bibby was not proof against this offer. She gave Hugh one look of intense grat.i.tude and hurried into the house, returning presently with a small roll of typewritten MS--her latest creation, _Hypocrites_.
"This story," she said quite tremulously--"Oh, I am so anxious, so very anxious about it. The editor of the _Evening Mail_--has promised to use one of mine; it will be--well, not quite my first story in print, but certainly the first one paid for. There is such a difference, isn"t there? Nearly any one can get a story into print if they want no remuneration. You can understand how anxious I am that it should be good. I sent it to be typed in town so that it would present a better appearance. It has just come back by the post. Oh! if you _could_ spare time to glance at it. Is it too much to ask?"
He laughed at her. "A bit of a story like that--three thousand words at the most! You are too modest, Miss Bibby. You should have brought me a packet weighing about half a hundredweight as the rest of them send me."
"No, no;--just that I am pinning all my hopes on _Hypocrites_." A wave of pink was in her cheeks, her eyes shone softly.
"With the greatest pleasure in life," said Hugh heartily, and tucked the little roll beneath his arm. "And now I had better go and wash my face, or Kate will be coming after me with a sponge and towel."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "A wave of pink was in her cheeks, her eyes shone softly."]
And back he went to "Tenby," while Miss Bibby with a much less heavy heart returned to her interrupted "one, two, three, four" with Pauline.
CHAPTER XIV
THE LITERARY MICROBE
"We are contagious," Pauline announced honestly and courageously at the advent of every stranger, however interesting.
And Lynn, equally careful it has been seen, refused to hold any intercourse with the author at "Tenby" until the searching question, "Have you had whooping cough?" had been put to him.
Yet here was Hugh Kinross himself taking no precaution whatever to protect the neighbouring "Greenways" from contagion, and the result was that the literary microbe was wafted across the road in a surprisingly short s.p.a.ce of time.
Miss Bibby certainly could not be said to be infected for the first time, though there was no doubt that since the new tenants had come to "Tenby" the disease had taken a much more aggravated form with her.
But Anna one afternoon made a solemn excursion to the store of Septimus Smith and purchased one exercise-book, one pen, one bottle of ink and one blotting-pad.
She had hitherto regarded the making of books as some occult art practised by certain persons, mostly as dead and as distant as one Shakespeare whose fame had faintly reached her.
But when there came into the unpretentious cottage across the road the actual author of a printed book that lay on a table in the drawing-room; and when this actual author was discovered on near view to be a rather stout man with a shockingly bad hat and creases all over his linen coats; and when the maid who dwelt in the same house with this actual author testified, during the course of a gossip, that he was in no wise different from other men--which is to say, he made no end of a fuss if the toast was not to his liking and threw his burnt matches down anywhere, and shouted angrily if there was no soap in the bathroom--why then, when all these things were discovered, Anna simply walked up to the store one fine afternoon and set herself up in the stock-in-trade of an author, marvelling that it had never before occurred to her to write a book.
But after she had done a very few chapters she craved a reading audience. Blake the gardener, she determined, was too surly for this office, and too sleepy; his day"s work so near to Nature"s heart and at such an alt.i.tude made him nod by seven o"clock in the evening. And one could hardly follow after him as he trundled about with his barrow in the daytime and read aloud to him how it was discovered that the lovely Annabell Deloitte, who was a nursery governess in a lord"s family, had been changed in the cradle and was really the Lady Florentine Trelawney.
And Miss Bibby, for all her gentleness, was too "stand-offish" for the position of listener. Anna at once rejected any idea of asking that lady to undertake the work.
But the children made a delightful audience and clamoured eagerly, the moment they reached the foot of the waterfall, for the "book" to be produced from the secret recesses of Anna"s umbrella (in which it hid itself from Miss Bibby"s eyes), and for the enthralling woes of the Lady Florentine Trelawney to be at once continued.
So it may be concluded that it was Anna who acted as the direct vehicle for the transmission of the literary infection to the children themselves.
The logic of the matter was very simple.
If Anna could write a book--Anna who was to be frequently seen with black s.m.u.ts from the stove all over her face; Anna who did not know that the reign of William the Conqueror was 1066 to 1087, nor where sago came from, nor what were the calyx and the stamen of a flower (had they not themselves tested her?)--well, if Anna could make up a book, so could they--every one of them.