h dreamily, "I have a few other little methods of work,
though so trivial and so essentially personal I don't know whether you
would find them worth mentioning."

"Oh, anything, anything, Mr. Kinross, if you will be so kind," said
Miss Bibby enthusiastically.

"Well," said Hugh, looking pensively around his work-room, "I am a man
of rather curious habits. I may say my habits have become part of my
nature. Certain spells are necessary to get me into proper vein for my
two hundred words. For instance, my collar--you may have been surprised
to find me collarless, Miss Bibby."

Miss Bibby hastily expressed the sentiment that nothing he could do
could surprise her; then saw the difficulties of the sentence, and
grappled hard with it to reduce it to a polite form that should express
the fact that a great author is above all the petty bonds that bind the
rest of the world, and must be expected to act accordingly.

But Hugh was evidently not listening to her.

"Most authors, I believe," he said, "when working, wear their collars in
the place intended by nature--or should I say the manufacturers?--namely,
around their neck. I cannot write one word until it is in the corner of
the room."

Miss Bibby made a note of the curious fact.

"And, mark you," said Hugh impressively, "it has to be the left-hand
corner, facing the door, or the charm won't work."

"How _very_ strange!" murmured Miss Bibby.

"Then my shoes," said Hugh. "There are authors, doubtless, who can
write with these in their customary place--upon their feet. I cannot. My
soul is too large, too chaotic. But perhaps you are not interested in
men's shoes, Miss Bibby?"

He was regarding sadly the one of his own that stood in the middle of
the floor.

"Oh, an author's shoes," murmured Miss Bibby.

"Well then, curious as it may seem to you, that, too, has become one of
my spells," said Hugh, "my feet unfettered beneath my table. One shoe a
little pointed to the right in the middle of the room; another, sole
upwards, on a chair three and three-quarter feet distant from its
fellow."

"Absolutely remarkable!" gasped Miss Bibby. She looked at him, a pencil
poised a little hesitatingly. Was this thing possible? Was the great
author then not quite, quite----she hardly liked, even in thought, to
use the word sane?

"Oh, of course," said Hugh diffidently, "the fact may not seem worth
mentioning in your article, but it is my experience that there is
nothing which s