LI
THE next day they laid their clever heads together and wrote a letter to Elmer P. It was appreciative but peremptory. He must mail his latest photograph at once. And he had better send that old green album, too, with all those snapshots in it of Cowbarn, Iowa, including some interesting views of the exterior and the interior of the office building of the good oldIndependent.
Mame gave a solemn undertaking to get out the big drum and to go around with it. She and her friends, in fact, would organise such a publicity campaign as would astonish even a booster like himself. But he, too, must be ready to do his bit. By the time London had the book in its hands, it would be dying to see the author. He must come over, if only for a week, he must, he must! That final imperative word was three times underscored.
The thirteen days that followed the letter’s posting were rather anxious ones. Lady Violet feared that when Mame’s excitement had time to cool a bad reaction would set in. By judicious fanning, however, she was able to keep the flame alive; sufficiently, at any rate, to provide a highly necessary distraction.
Elmer’s reply came promptly. The urgent skill ofthe summons had at least stirred him to that. Moreover, in the pompous language of the British House of Go-getters, which Mame had heard for herself from the Ladies’ Gallery, the answer was in the affirmative. The great man actually promised to come to London. His coming, moreover, should synchronise with the British publication of his book, which since he wrote last had sold three more editions in these United States.
“He doesn’t let the grass grow!” Mame crowed her triumph. It was disinterested triumph. She had nothing to gain, as far as she knew, by the coming of Elmer, except in the way of humble-minded ministry to his rapidly growing fame. “One of the up-and-coming ones is Elmer, for all he’s so quiet. Tell me, Vi, what do you think of his photograph?”
“Is it like him?”
“He’s changed some, I’ll say, since I left him in the editor’s office at Cowbarn, twenty months ago to-morrow.”
“A clever face.” A good face, too, Lady Violet might have added. She certainly saw something oddly attractive in the fair, open countenance of Elmer P.
“I guess there’s something better than clever in it.” Mame gazed critically at the photograph.
“Well, dear child, I guess there is, too.”
Her friend looked at her tenderly and then laughed to herself softly.