on _the_ calendar, to be exact. Many of his lady friends and admirers
invariably presented him with calendars at Christmas time ("Such a
suitable present for an author, my dear!"); exquisite works of art some
of them were, whose dainty strips of ribbon, adroitly pulled, brought
into more or less perfect view the day of the month nestling in the
heart of a flower. Or you would turn a gilded handle perhaps and a day
of the week would appear on the silver sail of a ship, while another
turn would bring the date to the figure head and the pressing of a
spring send the name of the month fluttering as a flag on the top of the
mast. Hugh had a sincere admiration for this ingenious trifle, and
frequently when a hero was behaving untowardly idly amused himself with
spinning up the signs.

But of course, if one really wanted to know the date one looked at the
plainest one had: this year it happened to be a gratis one, presented
with the advertisement pamphlets of some patent medicine, and it had
stood Hugh in good stead from January to now, when November's cloud of
heat clung closely to the mountains.

But the sight of it caused him to groan and to realize that the just
passed Berserk mood had cost him perhaps seven thousand words; and the
seven thousand words represented all the work he had done up here at
"Tenby"--"Tenby" that he had taken expressly for the performance of
doughty deeds of literature.

He looked ruefully at his snowballs;--perhaps after all he had been
hypercritical, perhaps one or two of those pages might be rescued and
smoothed out and made to answer. After all, who else would be the better
or the worse for it? All the public wanted of him was a piquant flavour
for its jaded appetite and the details on which he bestowed such a fever
of care would probably escape its attention altogether. Yes, after all,
what was he? Just the paid provider of certain species of mental
refreshment,--a sort of fashionable drink that the hurrying public,
coming along and seeing others drinking, took a gulp at and went on with
its much more important work nor better nor worse for the quaff. Why, an
orange boy, selling his honest juicy fruit to a thirsty crowd was a
better public benefactor than himself! Pah! he had been over-estimating
himself of late; he was not of the authors who might legitimately claim
to refresh and stimulate the race to higher things. He was just a maker
of "bitters," and the public, in its charmingly insc