ring: 'Mother! mother!' a cry equal to 'I am sure I
do right,' and understood so by Nataly approving it; she too on the line
of her instinct, without an object in sight.

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE MOTHER-THE DAUGHTER

Taking Nesta's hand, on her entry into his chambers with her father,
Colney Durance bowed over it and kissed it. The unusual performance
had a meaning; she felt she was praised. It might be because she made
herself her father's companion. 'I can't persuade him to put on a
great-coat,' she said. 'You would defeat his aim at the particular
waistcoat of his ambition,' said Colney, goaded to speak, not anxious to
be heard.

He kept her beside him, leading her about for introductions to multiform
celebrities of both sexes; among them the gentleman editing the Magazine
which gave out serially THE RIVAL TONGUES: and there was talk of a
dragon-throated public's queer appetite in Letters. The pained Editor
deferentially smiled at her cheerful mention of Delphica. 'In, book
form, perhaps!' he remarked, with plaintive' resignation; adding: 'You
read it?' And a lady exclaimed: 'We all read it!'

But we are the elect, who see signification and catch flavour; and we
are reminded of an insatiable monster how sometimes capricious is his
gorge. 'He may happen to be in the humour for a shaking!' Colney's poor
consolation it was to say of the prospects of his published book: for
the funny monster has been known to like a shaking.

'He takes it kinder tickled,' said Fenellan, joining the group and
grasping Nesta's hand with a warmth that thrilled her and set her
guessing. 'A taste of his favourite Cayenne lollypop, Colney; it fetches
the tear he loves to shed, or it gives him digestive heat in the bag of
his literary receptacle-fearfully relaxed and enormous! And no wonder;
his is to lie him down on notion of the attitude for reading, his back;
and he has in a jiffy the funnel of the Libraries inserted into his
mouth, and he feels the publishers pouring their gallons through it
unlimitedly; never crying out, which he can't; only swelling, which
he's obliged to do, with a non-nutritious inflation; and that's his
intellectual enjoyment; bearing a likeness to the horrible old torture
of the baillir d'eau; and he's doomed to perish in the worst book-form
of dropsy. You, my dear Colney, have offended his police or excise, who
stand by the funnel, in touch with his palate, to make sure that nothing
above proof is poured in; an