[294]CHAPTER XXVIIIONE GLORIOUS HOUR“So lay that afternoon to sleepAmong your dearest pansy-knots,The hushed herbarium where you keepYour heart’s forget-me-nots.”Downhillfor a space, then over a feeble creek, and springing steeply up again ran the green road that branched off from the red and more important one of the lonely suburb, and once past the doctor’s house narrowed into a bush-track that lost itself over the hill.Perhaps half-a-dozen people traversed it in a day, for all patients, visitors, and tradespeople used the straighter road that led to the side of the house.A fence ran along either side of the wide, green road, guarding property which was wild bush at present, but might some day have a value. And bracken and wild grass crept from beneath the two rail barriers and boldly made a springing place of the road itself. Rarely was buggy or cart so reckless of its internal economy as to make a way across the[295]ruts and tree-stumps, so the blue vine clambered at will over the stumps and flung delicate tendrils and flower-smothered loops to catch the feet.Dolly was coming down this road while Phyl’s personal appearance was under criticism. In her hand she grasped something white very, very tightly. She was running almost all the time, stumbling over the ruts, caught in the creepers. On, on she came, with a face where the scarlet colours ebbed and flowed in the strangest way—on, on, over the shallow little stream where Freddie gave the bull-frogs no peace. Up, up the green rise—bursting in at the gate, and leaving it welcomely open for the grateful, vagrant cow. Up a green bank and recklessly across the flower-beds,—the circling drive was impossible—then up the steps and into the hall. Here a loose mat caught her feet, and she found herself on the floor. “Phyl! Phyl!” she called in a breathless voice; and now her fingers went to slit open the white envelope. She did not attempt to get up.Phyl was in the hall. Clif was there, too, and the mother. At intervals up the staircase occurred Weenie and Freddie and Richie. Ted put his head over the banisters. “What’s the row?” he said.And there, on the floor, was Dolly with a bit of paper in her hand, laughing, choking, crying. She denied the last afterwards, but Freddie declared her eyes were “as red as anything, and as wet as water.”[296]Some one shook her; perhaps it was Phyl, incredulous that Dolly could have a secret that she had not shared.Richie’s voice was heard urging her to “stop being a little donkey;” and Dolly made a wild effort after the control of her lips and voice.“I’ve—I’ve—I’ve——” she said, and excitement grasped her throat again, and she merely laughed and choked. Some one shook her again. “I’ve—written a b—book,” she said, thus urged.Some one snatched the paper from her, half-a-dozen heads tried to crowd round and read it at the same time. A most business-like epistle it was, with the printed name of a well-known publisher at the top, and a cable address, and other important things about it. And, “Dear Madam,” it said,—such was Dolly’s excitement the very “Madam” appealed to her as the most exquisitely humorous thing in the world.“Dear Madam,“The MS. you submitted I have read in due course. With the terrible general depression in trade just now, I am exercising my powers as agent very sparingly, preferring to send all MS. to London for the consideration of the firm there. But from your communication I take it you desire to negotiate for publication of your story without delay. If you will acquaint me with your views as to what[297]value you place on your work I will write you further in the matter.“Faithfully yours,“James Ledman.”“Pooh!” said Richie, disappointedly. “There’s nothing there to make a fuss about.”Even Clif said something about counting chickens too soon, and advised Dolly to put her head under the tap to keep it cool till the “further” letter came.“It’s not refused,” said Dolly with a deep breath, “that’s all I care about.”Weenie looked on deprecatingly. “Will it be a really truly book with covers on and everything?” she said. She only extended a kindly contempt to the little magazine.“Of course it will,” said Dolly, and rose from the floor and sat down on a hall-chair as befitted her new dignity.“I wouldn’t put your name on it, then,” said Weenie; “people would laugh like anything at a scrap of a girl like you writing a book.”“Oh, mother!” said Dolly, “you would put your name, wouldn’t you? At first I was going to put ‘White Heather’ or ‘Hyacinth,’ like we did in the paper, but the name lookedsonice.”“Certainly put your name,” said Mrs. Wise, who was reading the letter over and over again with cheeks quite pink with pleasure and pride.[298]Weenie on the staircase laughed shrilly. “Oh, she can’t, mother,” she said. “Dolly Conway, Dolly Conway,—why, it sounds as silly as anything. Look how different Charles Dickens and Emma Jane Worboise and Charlotte Yonge sound! Dolly’s isn’t a proper-sounding name.”“I put ‘Dorothy R. Conway,’” Dolly said. “I think it sounds as right as anything—doesn’t it, Phyl? Oh, I can see it quite plainly—in little gold letters, and written slantingly. Oh, I do hope they won’t print it straight—and not red covers or blue. Imusthave that lovely sage-green—on brown Russian leather, Phyl, like the little Tennyson. Oh, Imusthave it in Russian leather. I think I’ll write at once.”“I don’t like Dorothy R.,” objected Clif, “it’s got a Yankee sound,—Silas H. Wiggins, Hiram T. Moneybags.”But Dolly’s ear found Dorothy Conway too plain, and Dorothy Rankin Conway too important, so she clung to the intermediate R.“But, I say,” said Richie the practical, “how much shall you get? He asked you to tell how much.”“Yes,” said Dolly, “we’ll have to think of that. How much should you say, mother?”But Mrs. Wise was as ignorant as any of them as to book values. “How long did it take you to write it?” she said. “You might arrive at an idea of its value to you in that way.”Dolly tried to calculate. “I began it on my birthday,”[299]she said. “I felt I would try to do something big that day. Then every day I kept writing a little at it for ever so many weeks,—about eight. And then it got hard, and Icouldn’tdo it, and it all seemed stupid, and I threw it behind the piano, and it stayed there for long enough. And then, one day, I was dusting the room, and I knocked Alf’s portrait over, and it fell behind too, so Davey and I had to pull the piano out, and I found the story, and it all seemed easy to go on with, and I finished it in about a week.”“Say two months, then,” said Mrs. Wise.Dolly calculated again. “We got two pound ten a month each from the paper, and that took all our time. Do you think it would be too much to ask five pounds?”“Oh, I think you ought to get more than that, surely,” said Mrs. Wise. “Five pounds is very little. I think large sums are paid for books.”“Five pounds!” ejaculated Freddie. “I say, Dolly, the cricket-ball is awful burst, you wouldn’t miss two and six out of five pounds.”“Well, suppose I saytenpounds,” said Dolly, looking round questioningly; “perhaps it wouldn’t be too much. Ten pounds, and a copy each all round. I oughtn’t to have to buy my own book.”“Look here,” Clif said, “he wouldn’t have bothered to ask you what value you put on it if he did not think it pretty good. I’d ask a cool fifty; he is sure to beat you down, so perhaps you’ll get twenty-five in the end.”[300]“Twenty-five pounds!” Dolly said, her eyes lustrous. “Oh, but, Clif, I’m sure covers cost a lot; I don’t think they’d be able to pay twenty-five pounds to me after the covers and printing and everything.”Ted, who had disappeared for a time, now came back with several magazines in his hand.“I read an article in one of these about the prices authoresses get,” he said; “perhaps we can get an idea this way.”It was Phyl who found the exact paper and the exact article; she read out the items in a voice whose excitement increased as she went along.“Mrs. Humphrey Ward forRobert Elsmere, £10,000. Marie Corelli’s income is in the thousands, and Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett is said to have realized about £10,000 fromLittle Lord Fauntleroy.”Incoherent screams of astonishment and unbelief met these statements. Phyl went on to say that wise authors never sold their books outright, but had a royalty on each copy; that Olive Schreiner had omitted to insist upon this, and had received the sum of £12 only for herAfrican Farm, though some years later, after its enormous success, her publishers gave her a royalty.Dolly’s head was swimming. “I think I’ll write at once,” she said; “come on, Phyl,” and she hurried off to the little study.Phyl was rather quiet though she helped in the[301]preparations, pushed aside Richie’s useless inkstand, and placed a substantial one in its place.Dolly’s arms closed round her. “Was I horrid?” she said. “Phyl, Phyl, are you vexed? Oh, Phyl!”Phyl’s soft lips quivered a little. “Oh, no,” she said.Dolly’s arms clung tighter. “Oh, don’t,” she said, “please, don’t, I was going to tell you—oh, lots of times, but I thought you’d say I was conceited, thinking I could write abook. So I thought I’d finish it and send it first. But when I got the letter, all the way from the post, I wouldn’t open it, because I wanted you to be there.”Phyl looked mollified, and gave Dolly a sudden kiss.“It’s all right, it was only at first I minded, but you know I’m gladder about it than I could ever say. I’m so glad that I can’t think of anything else.” All sorts of loving praise she gave. Dolly squeezed her arm; there was moisture in her eyes at the generous words, her mouth was unsteady.“But how anxious, Dolly,—howveryanxious you must have been all the time,” she said.Dolly’s eyes looked out of the window to where an orange sun flamed to its death. Overhead and all around the sky was suffused with colour,—the very east burned gold and red of delicate shades, and turned the edges of its clouds rosy, and the shadows of them purple. Up very high in the broad blue hung the half moon.[302]When the girl spoke the hush of the dying day seemed to have crept into her voice. “No, I wasn’t,” she said, “someway Iknewit was going to be.” Then as Phyl’s eyes widened she tried to tell her something, struggled, kept silence, tried again; such talk came easy to neither, but deep currents were stirred to-day.“Knew?” repeated Phyl.“One night,” Dolly said, in the same low tone, “I felt I must dosomething. I felt I couldn’t just go on doing little things always,—staying at home and helping, and going to dances, and playing tennis. I used to think I should like to go as a missionary,—not to China, of course, only somewhere here where people were very poor and miserable. But that night I didn’t seem to want anything but to write books that people would love to read, and that might do them some good.”“Well?” said Phyl, for Dolly had paused, and was looking with glowing eyes at the happy sky.“I just prayed, Phyl. It seemed so simple. God had said all things were possible to faith,—that we were to Ask, and we should Receive, thatall things whatsoeverwe should ask in prayer, believing, we should receive. He didn’t say we were to stop to consider if the thing we asked seemed impossible. He just saidall things whatsoever. And I prayed, Phyl, that I might write books. All my life seemed to go in the prayer. And everything was—wonderful. I was[303]kneeling by the window, and the sky seemed to bend down all round me, it was so warm and close. We have never known just what it is to have an own Father, Phyl, but I knew that night. And I prayed and prayed, and IknewHe was answering me. Oh, Phyl, if you could have seen the stars,—so large and kind!”Phyl’s face was very soft and sweet.“When mother was so ill, I prayed—just like that,” she said, “and I went to sleepknowingshe would grow well.”“This is only a little tiny book, of course,” Dolly said; “but it is the beginning of the answer. I shall write the others yet. Oh, Phyl, all my heart seems singing thanks.”The laughing sunset sky had quietened as they talked, and the sweet gravity of early evening was stealing over it. From the garden the voices that had seemed music and part of the sunset when far away, came closer, and now, hearty and unsoftened, brought the girls back to earth.Dolly pushed back her hair, and picked up a pen.“You must write a book now, Phyl,” she said.“I’ll start this very week,” said Phyl. And she did, and in due course a flattering letter of acceptance came, and nearly all the excitement was repeated.But this afternoon there was only the first book of the family in their thoughts.[304]Dolly, after about ten different attempts, had her reply ready for thepublisher—J. Ledman, Esq.“Dear Sir(she wrote),“The value I place upon the copyright of my story,The Sins of Six, is £200. I also desire to have a royalty on every copy. I hope you will let the book have artistic covers; I much dislike red or bright blue, and shall be glad if you will let me have either white parchment covers, with red lettering and rough edges, or dull green Russian leather, with the name across it in careless gold lettering.“Faithfully yours,“Dorothy R. Conway.“P.S.—I hope you will let me have twelve copies for myself.”“That’s the very least number I could do with,” she said, as she laid down her pen; “there are ten of us, and I know every one, even Freddie, will demand a separate copy, so that only leaves two for outsiders.”A loud noise of pummelling on the door was heard, so they went out.Somebody said the family had been so overwhelmed with surprise, it had not, it feared, paid due honours to its authoress, and was anxious to make amends. Whereupon Weenie planted on Dolly’s head a[305]wreath hastily made of nasturtiums and honeysuckle; and Clif and Ted, with a cushion on their crossed hands,carried herfor an extremely jolting and triumphal march round the drive and down the orchard and back.They dropped her in a heap on the lawn.[Illustration]Carried her for a triumphal march.“Here’s hoping you won’t think it necessary to bring a book out every day,” Clif said, and mopped his streaming forehead.“I want to know, as soon as any one can spare me any attention, what the book is about,” said Mrs. Wise, packing up the tea-things that were on the grass.[306]“Oh, it’s not much,” said Dolly candidly.“I suppose that means it is one of your children’s stories,” said Mrs. Wise.“Yes,” said Dolly, and there was a faint shadow of regret in her eyes.Ted sat upright again. He had pretended to be bowed down to the ground with trembling fear about the subject.“It just struck me it might beElvira and Alphonsoin three books of forty-nine cantos each,” he said.“OrThe Spirits of the Nether World,” said Clif. This wildly watery version ofParadise Lost, and a certain Spanish tragedy, impossibly long, were standing jokes in the house, yet the one shade on Dolly’s intense happiness that afternoon was the fact that it was not one of these ambitious efforts that was to see the light of print; she had a very small opinion herself of the children’s stories she scribbled so easily.Freddie was round at Dolly’s elbow, assiduously offering her the sugar—which she never took—and pointing out the piece of cake which was richest in currants.“Tommie Edwards at our school got a whole set for his birthday,—the bat and stumps and bails as well as the ball, Dolly,” he said.
“So lay that afternoon to sleepAmong your dearest pansy-knots,The hushed herbarium where you keepYour heart’s forget-me-nots.”
“So lay that afternoon to sleepAmong your dearest pansy-knots,The hushed herbarium where you keepYour heart’s forget-me-nots.”
“So lay that afternoon to sleepAmong your dearest pansy-knots,The hushed herbarium where you keepYour heart’s forget-me-nots.”
“So lay that afternoon to sleep
Among your dearest pansy-knots,
The hushed herbarium where you keep
Your heart’s forget-me-nots.”
Downhillfor a space, then over a feeble creek, and springing steeply up again ran the green road that branched off from the red and more important one of the lonely suburb, and once past the doctor’s house narrowed into a bush-track that lost itself over the hill.
Perhaps half-a-dozen people traversed it in a day, for all patients, visitors, and tradespeople used the straighter road that led to the side of the house.
A fence ran along either side of the wide, green road, guarding property which was wild bush at present, but might some day have a value. And bracken and wild grass crept from beneath the two rail barriers and boldly made a springing place of the road itself. Rarely was buggy or cart so reckless of its internal economy as to make a way across the[295]ruts and tree-stumps, so the blue vine clambered at will over the stumps and flung delicate tendrils and flower-smothered loops to catch the feet.
Dolly was coming down this road while Phyl’s personal appearance was under criticism. In her hand she grasped something white very, very tightly. She was running almost all the time, stumbling over the ruts, caught in the creepers. On, on she came, with a face where the scarlet colours ebbed and flowed in the strangest way—on, on, over the shallow little stream where Freddie gave the bull-frogs no peace. Up, up the green rise—bursting in at the gate, and leaving it welcomely open for the grateful, vagrant cow. Up a green bank and recklessly across the flower-beds,—the circling drive was impossible—then up the steps and into the hall. Here a loose mat caught her feet, and she found herself on the floor. “Phyl! Phyl!” she called in a breathless voice; and now her fingers went to slit open the white envelope. She did not attempt to get up.
Phyl was in the hall. Clif was there, too, and the mother. At intervals up the staircase occurred Weenie and Freddie and Richie. Ted put his head over the banisters. “What’s the row?” he said.
And there, on the floor, was Dolly with a bit of paper in her hand, laughing, choking, crying. She denied the last afterwards, but Freddie declared her eyes were “as red as anything, and as wet as water.”
[296]Some one shook her; perhaps it was Phyl, incredulous that Dolly could have a secret that she had not shared.
Richie’s voice was heard urging her to “stop being a little donkey;” and Dolly made a wild effort after the control of her lips and voice.
“I’ve—I’ve—I’ve——” she said, and excitement grasped her throat again, and she merely laughed and choked. Some one shook her again. “I’ve—written a b—book,” she said, thus urged.
Some one snatched the paper from her, half-a-dozen heads tried to crowd round and read it at the same time. A most business-like epistle it was, with the printed name of a well-known publisher at the top, and a cable address, and other important things about it. And, “Dear Madam,” it said,—such was Dolly’s excitement the very “Madam” appealed to her as the most exquisitely humorous thing in the world.
“Dear Madam,“The MS. you submitted I have read in due course. With the terrible general depression in trade just now, I am exercising my powers as agent very sparingly, preferring to send all MS. to London for the consideration of the firm there. But from your communication I take it you desire to negotiate for publication of your story without delay. If you will acquaint me with your views as to what[297]value you place on your work I will write you further in the matter.“Faithfully yours,“James Ledman.”
“Dear Madam,
“The MS. you submitted I have read in due course. With the terrible general depression in trade just now, I am exercising my powers as agent very sparingly, preferring to send all MS. to London for the consideration of the firm there. But from your communication I take it you desire to negotiate for publication of your story without delay. If you will acquaint me with your views as to what[297]value you place on your work I will write you further in the matter.
“Faithfully yours,“James Ledman.”
“Faithfully yours,“James Ledman.”
“Faithfully yours,
“James Ledman.”
“Pooh!” said Richie, disappointedly. “There’s nothing there to make a fuss about.”
Even Clif said something about counting chickens too soon, and advised Dolly to put her head under the tap to keep it cool till the “further” letter came.
“It’s not refused,” said Dolly with a deep breath, “that’s all I care about.”
Weenie looked on deprecatingly. “Will it be a really truly book with covers on and everything?” she said. She only extended a kindly contempt to the little magazine.
“Of course it will,” said Dolly, and rose from the floor and sat down on a hall-chair as befitted her new dignity.
“I wouldn’t put your name on it, then,” said Weenie; “people would laugh like anything at a scrap of a girl like you writing a book.”
“Oh, mother!” said Dolly, “you would put your name, wouldn’t you? At first I was going to put ‘White Heather’ or ‘Hyacinth,’ like we did in the paper, but the name lookedsonice.”
“Certainly put your name,” said Mrs. Wise, who was reading the letter over and over again with cheeks quite pink with pleasure and pride.
[298]Weenie on the staircase laughed shrilly. “Oh, she can’t, mother,” she said. “Dolly Conway, Dolly Conway,—why, it sounds as silly as anything. Look how different Charles Dickens and Emma Jane Worboise and Charlotte Yonge sound! Dolly’s isn’t a proper-sounding name.”
“I put ‘Dorothy R. Conway,’” Dolly said. “I think it sounds as right as anything—doesn’t it, Phyl? Oh, I can see it quite plainly—in little gold letters, and written slantingly. Oh, I do hope they won’t print it straight—and not red covers or blue. Imusthave that lovely sage-green—on brown Russian leather, Phyl, like the little Tennyson. Oh, Imusthave it in Russian leather. I think I’ll write at once.”
“I don’t like Dorothy R.,” objected Clif, “it’s got a Yankee sound,—Silas H. Wiggins, Hiram T. Moneybags.”
But Dolly’s ear found Dorothy Conway too plain, and Dorothy Rankin Conway too important, so she clung to the intermediate R.
“But, I say,” said Richie the practical, “how much shall you get? He asked you to tell how much.”
“Yes,” said Dolly, “we’ll have to think of that. How much should you say, mother?”
But Mrs. Wise was as ignorant as any of them as to book values. “How long did it take you to write it?” she said. “You might arrive at an idea of its value to you in that way.”
Dolly tried to calculate. “I began it on my birthday,”[299]she said. “I felt I would try to do something big that day. Then every day I kept writing a little at it for ever so many weeks,—about eight. And then it got hard, and Icouldn’tdo it, and it all seemed stupid, and I threw it behind the piano, and it stayed there for long enough. And then, one day, I was dusting the room, and I knocked Alf’s portrait over, and it fell behind too, so Davey and I had to pull the piano out, and I found the story, and it all seemed easy to go on with, and I finished it in about a week.”
“Say two months, then,” said Mrs. Wise.
Dolly calculated again. “We got two pound ten a month each from the paper, and that took all our time. Do you think it would be too much to ask five pounds?”
“Oh, I think you ought to get more than that, surely,” said Mrs. Wise. “Five pounds is very little. I think large sums are paid for books.”
“Five pounds!” ejaculated Freddie. “I say, Dolly, the cricket-ball is awful burst, you wouldn’t miss two and six out of five pounds.”
“Well, suppose I saytenpounds,” said Dolly, looking round questioningly; “perhaps it wouldn’t be too much. Ten pounds, and a copy each all round. I oughtn’t to have to buy my own book.”
“Look here,” Clif said, “he wouldn’t have bothered to ask you what value you put on it if he did not think it pretty good. I’d ask a cool fifty; he is sure to beat you down, so perhaps you’ll get twenty-five in the end.”
[300]“Twenty-five pounds!” Dolly said, her eyes lustrous. “Oh, but, Clif, I’m sure covers cost a lot; I don’t think they’d be able to pay twenty-five pounds to me after the covers and printing and everything.”
Ted, who had disappeared for a time, now came back with several magazines in his hand.
“I read an article in one of these about the prices authoresses get,” he said; “perhaps we can get an idea this way.”
It was Phyl who found the exact paper and the exact article; she read out the items in a voice whose excitement increased as she went along.
“Mrs. Humphrey Ward forRobert Elsmere, £10,000. Marie Corelli’s income is in the thousands, and Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett is said to have realized about £10,000 fromLittle Lord Fauntleroy.”
Incoherent screams of astonishment and unbelief met these statements. Phyl went on to say that wise authors never sold their books outright, but had a royalty on each copy; that Olive Schreiner had omitted to insist upon this, and had received the sum of £12 only for herAfrican Farm, though some years later, after its enormous success, her publishers gave her a royalty.
Dolly’s head was swimming. “I think I’ll write at once,” she said; “come on, Phyl,” and she hurried off to the little study.
Phyl was rather quiet though she helped in the[301]preparations, pushed aside Richie’s useless inkstand, and placed a substantial one in its place.
Dolly’s arms closed round her. “Was I horrid?” she said. “Phyl, Phyl, are you vexed? Oh, Phyl!”
Phyl’s soft lips quivered a little. “Oh, no,” she said.
Dolly’s arms clung tighter. “Oh, don’t,” she said, “please, don’t, I was going to tell you—oh, lots of times, but I thought you’d say I was conceited, thinking I could write abook. So I thought I’d finish it and send it first. But when I got the letter, all the way from the post, I wouldn’t open it, because I wanted you to be there.”
Phyl looked mollified, and gave Dolly a sudden kiss.
“It’s all right, it was only at first I minded, but you know I’m gladder about it than I could ever say. I’m so glad that I can’t think of anything else.” All sorts of loving praise she gave. Dolly squeezed her arm; there was moisture in her eyes at the generous words, her mouth was unsteady.
“But how anxious, Dolly,—howveryanxious you must have been all the time,” she said.
Dolly’s eyes looked out of the window to where an orange sun flamed to its death. Overhead and all around the sky was suffused with colour,—the very east burned gold and red of delicate shades, and turned the edges of its clouds rosy, and the shadows of them purple. Up very high in the broad blue hung the half moon.
[302]When the girl spoke the hush of the dying day seemed to have crept into her voice. “No, I wasn’t,” she said, “someway Iknewit was going to be.” Then as Phyl’s eyes widened she tried to tell her something, struggled, kept silence, tried again; such talk came easy to neither, but deep currents were stirred to-day.
“Knew?” repeated Phyl.
“One night,” Dolly said, in the same low tone, “I felt I must dosomething. I felt I couldn’t just go on doing little things always,—staying at home and helping, and going to dances, and playing tennis. I used to think I should like to go as a missionary,—not to China, of course, only somewhere here where people were very poor and miserable. But that night I didn’t seem to want anything but to write books that people would love to read, and that might do them some good.”
“Well?” said Phyl, for Dolly had paused, and was looking with glowing eyes at the happy sky.
“I just prayed, Phyl. It seemed so simple. God had said all things were possible to faith,—that we were to Ask, and we should Receive, thatall things whatsoeverwe should ask in prayer, believing, we should receive. He didn’t say we were to stop to consider if the thing we asked seemed impossible. He just saidall things whatsoever. And I prayed, Phyl, that I might write books. All my life seemed to go in the prayer. And everything was—wonderful. I was[303]kneeling by the window, and the sky seemed to bend down all round me, it was so warm and close. We have never known just what it is to have an own Father, Phyl, but I knew that night. And I prayed and prayed, and IknewHe was answering me. Oh, Phyl, if you could have seen the stars,—so large and kind!”
Phyl’s face was very soft and sweet.
“When mother was so ill, I prayed—just like that,” she said, “and I went to sleepknowingshe would grow well.”
“This is only a little tiny book, of course,” Dolly said; “but it is the beginning of the answer. I shall write the others yet. Oh, Phyl, all my heart seems singing thanks.”
The laughing sunset sky had quietened as they talked, and the sweet gravity of early evening was stealing over it. From the garden the voices that had seemed music and part of the sunset when far away, came closer, and now, hearty and unsoftened, brought the girls back to earth.
Dolly pushed back her hair, and picked up a pen.
“You must write a book now, Phyl,” she said.
“I’ll start this very week,” said Phyl. And she did, and in due course a flattering letter of acceptance came, and nearly all the excitement was repeated.
But this afternoon there was only the first book of the family in their thoughts.
[304]Dolly, after about ten different attempts, had her reply ready for thepublisher—
J. Ledman, Esq.“Dear Sir(she wrote),“The value I place upon the copyright of my story,The Sins of Six, is £200. I also desire to have a royalty on every copy. I hope you will let the book have artistic covers; I much dislike red or bright blue, and shall be glad if you will let me have either white parchment covers, with red lettering and rough edges, or dull green Russian leather, with the name across it in careless gold lettering.“Faithfully yours,“Dorothy R. Conway.“P.S.—I hope you will let me have twelve copies for myself.”
J. Ledman, Esq.
“Dear Sir(she wrote),
“The value I place upon the copyright of my story,The Sins of Six, is £200. I also desire to have a royalty on every copy. I hope you will let the book have artistic covers; I much dislike red or bright blue, and shall be glad if you will let me have either white parchment covers, with red lettering and rough edges, or dull green Russian leather, with the name across it in careless gold lettering.
“Faithfully yours,“Dorothy R. Conway.
“Faithfully yours,“Dorothy R. Conway.
“Faithfully yours,
“Dorothy R. Conway.
“P.S.—I hope you will let me have twelve copies for myself.”
“That’s the very least number I could do with,” she said, as she laid down her pen; “there are ten of us, and I know every one, even Freddie, will demand a separate copy, so that only leaves two for outsiders.”
A loud noise of pummelling on the door was heard, so they went out.
Somebody said the family had been so overwhelmed with surprise, it had not, it feared, paid due honours to its authoress, and was anxious to make amends. Whereupon Weenie planted on Dolly’s head a[305]wreath hastily made of nasturtiums and honeysuckle; and Clif and Ted, with a cushion on their crossed hands,carried herfor an extremely jolting and triumphal march round the drive and down the orchard and back.
They dropped her in a heap on the lawn.
[Illustration]Carried her for a triumphal march.
Carried her for a triumphal march.
“Here’s hoping you won’t think it necessary to bring a book out every day,” Clif said, and mopped his streaming forehead.
“I want to know, as soon as any one can spare me any attention, what the book is about,” said Mrs. Wise, packing up the tea-things that were on the grass.
[306]“Oh, it’s not much,” said Dolly candidly.
“I suppose that means it is one of your children’s stories,” said Mrs. Wise.
“Yes,” said Dolly, and there was a faint shadow of regret in her eyes.
Ted sat upright again. He had pretended to be bowed down to the ground with trembling fear about the subject.
“It just struck me it might beElvira and Alphonsoin three books of forty-nine cantos each,” he said.
“OrThe Spirits of the Nether World,” said Clif. This wildly watery version ofParadise Lost, and a certain Spanish tragedy, impossibly long, were standing jokes in the house, yet the one shade on Dolly’s intense happiness that afternoon was the fact that it was not one of these ambitious efforts that was to see the light of print; she had a very small opinion herself of the children’s stories she scribbled so easily.
Freddie was round at Dolly’s elbow, assiduously offering her the sugar—which she never took—and pointing out the piece of cake which was richest in currants.
“Tommie Edwards at our school got a whole set for his birthday,—the bat and stumps and bails as well as the ball, Dolly,” he said.