d did the honours of her house irreproachably, and presided at
the tea-table, and was rapture personified when she held the baby Jean
(called after Tommy's mother), and sat gaily on the floor, ready to
catch little Corp when he would not stop at seven. But Tommy, whom
nothing escaped, knew with what depression she might pay for her joy
when they had gone. Despite all his efforts, she might sit talking to
herself, at first of pleasant things and then of things less pleasant.
Or she stared at her reflection in the long mirror and said: "Isn't
she sweet!" or "She is not really sweet, and she did so want to be
good!" Or instead of that she would suddenly go upon her knees and
say, with clasped hands, the childish prayer, "Save me from masterful
men," which Jean Myles had told Tommy to teach Elspeth. No one could
have looked less masterful at those times than Tommy, but Grizel did
not seem to think so. And probably they had that night once more to
search the Den.

"The children do her harm; she must not see them again," he decided.

"They give her pleasure at the time," David said. "It lightens your
task now and then."

"It is the future I am thinking of, Gemmell. If she cannot progress,
she shall not fall back. As for me, never mind me."

"Elspeth is in a sad state about you, though! And you can get through
so little work."

"Enough for all our wants." (He was writing magazine papers only.)

"The public will forget you."

"They have forgotten me."

David was openly sorry for him now. "If only your manuscript had been
saved!"

"Yes; I never thought the little gods would treat me so scurvily as
that."

"Who?"

"Did I never tell you of my little gods? I so often emerged triumphant
from my troubles, and so undeservedly, that I thought I was especially
looked after by certain tricky spirits in return for the entertainment
I gave them. My little gods, I called them, and we had quite a bowing
acquaintance. But you see at the critical moment they flew away
laughing."

He always knew that the lost manuscript was his great work. "My
seventh wave," he called it; "and though all the conditions were
favourable," he said, "I know that I could run to nothing more than
little waves at present. As for rewriting that book, I can't; I have
tried."

Yet he was not asking for commiseration. "Tell Elspeth not to worry
about me. If I have no big ideas just now, I have some very passable
little ones, and one in particular that--