.

"I think I have had letters from you?" said the Editor.

[Illustration: HE LOOKED AT OSWALD'S BOOTS.]

Alice, who looked terrible with the transformation leaning
right-ear-ward, said yes, and that we had come to say what a fine,
bold conception we thought the Doge's chapter was. This was what we
had settled to say, but she needn't have burst out with it like that. I
suppose she forgot herself. Oswald, in the agitation of his clothes,
could say nothing. The elastic of the hat seemed to be very slowly
slipping up the back of his head, and he knew that, if it once passed
the bump that backs of heads are made with, the hat would spring from
his head like an arrow from a bow. And all would be frustrated.

"Yes," said the Editor; "that chapter seems to have had a great
success--a wonderful success. I had no fewer than sixteen letters about
it, all praising it in unmeasured terms." He looked at Oswald's boots,
which Oswald had neglected to cover over with his petticoats. He now did
this.

"It _is_ a nice story, you know," said Alice timidly.

"So it seems," the gentleman went on. "Fourteen of the sixteen letters
bear the Blackheath postmark. The enthusiasm for the chapter would seem
to be mainly local."

Oswald would not look at Alice. He could not trust himself, with her
looking like she did. He knew at once that only the piano-tuner and the
electric bell man had been faithful to their trust. The others had all
posted their letters in the pillar-box just outside our gate. They
wanted to get rid of them as quickly as they could, I suppose.
Selfishness is a vile quality.

The author cannot deny that Oswald now wished he hadn't. The elastic was
certainly moving, slowly, but too surely. Oswald tried to check its
career by swelling out the bump on the back of his head, but he could
not think of the right way to do this.

"I am very pleased to see you," the Editor went on slowly, and there was
something about the way he spoke that made Oswald think of a cat playing
with a mouse. "Perhaps you can tell me. Are there many spiritualists in
Blackheath? Many clairvoyants?"

"Eh?" said Alice, forgetting that that is not the way to behave.

"People who foretell the future?" he said.

"I don't think so," said Alice. "Why?"

His eye twinkled. Oswald saw he had wanted her to ask this.

"Because," said the Editor, more slowly than ever, "I think there must
be. How otherwise can we account for that chapter about the 'Doge's