ss material before him, while here and
there on the dull grey of it, like patches of amazing scarlet clumsily
stitched on, were cutting phrases and sardonic observations closely
imitated from _Liars All_.

He tossed the stuff aside impatiently after the second reading and shot
an indignant glance through the window at "Greenways." But "Greenways"
only showed dimly through a mist that was rolling through the garden, so
imagination had to call up the offending figure of the would-be
authoress. And call her up it did,--kindly tender imagination! It
flashed two glimpses of her before Hugh's eyes, one as she knelt on the
path and dragged at a child's obstinate shoe biting her lips while the
marauding ants ran up her own sleeves. And the other as she faced him,
white-cheeked against the ruddy waratahs, and told him she "preferred to
talk of the New Zealand Terraces."

He drew the poor MS towards him again and glanced through it once more
desperately.

Then he took off his coat as a signal of earnest determination and
filled his pen afresh and pulled a sheaf of paper towards him and
settled down to see what might be done.

Two hours later he was still battling with it. He told himself it was
his expiation. He had galvanized a few of the paper dolls into something
a little resembling life, had put a dash of humour here and there and in
some slight degree strengthened the plot. All this by putting in slips
between the pages or by writing in the margin. But it was still a sorry
story.

He stood up, yawned relievedly and went to the window. "Greenways" was
smiling in the sunshine now as if it had never had such a garden guest
as mist.

"My dear lady," he said--he had a habit of thinking aloud when he was
alone like this--"that is not a kind action I have done you, though you
will probably thank me profusely. You can't always be edited like this,
and even with all this assistance you won't have the least idea how the
thing is done. As the Snark said,

'The method employed I would gladly explain,
While I have it so clear in my head,
If I had but the time and you had but the brain--
But yet much remains to be said.'

Anyway I've done my best to atone."

Kate came in with a telegram in her hand.

"And have you sixpence about you?" she said. "Of course it's not in
Larkin's day's work to deliver telegrams."

It was not--officially. But your telegram would lie on the little
counter of the post office fo