me kind of
an answer within a reasonable time. I ought to have got around to it
long ago."

Whatever the kind-hearted young man may have said about me I was given
yet another chance. A very business-like chap "took a shot at me," as
he expressed it, one forenoon at his desk, I was considerably
distressed, however, by the confusion and the multiplicity of
interruptions to which his attention to me was subject. When I thought
of the sacred privacy devoted to my creation, the whole-hearted
consecration of my dear parent's life-blood to my being, I felt that
such a reading was little short of criminally unjust. And how could
any one be expected to savour my power and my charm in the midst of
such distractions? The business-like chap sat somewhere near the
middle of a vast floor ranged with desks. In his immediate
neighbourhood a score or more of typewriters were clicking and perhaps
half as many telephones were going. The chap's own telephone rang, it
seemed to me, every five or six pages, and, resting me the while on his
knee, he expectantly awaited the outcome of his secretary's answering
conversation. At frequent intervals he was consulted by colleagues as
to this and that: covers, jackets, electros, fall catalogues, what not?
Nevertheless, he got through me in rather brisk order. At my
conclusion I observed no tears in his eyes. And, it was evident, he
settled my hash, as the phrase is, at this house.

I certainly felt sick at heart in that express car back to the corn
belt. My poor parent, when I again met him, unwrapped me very
tenderly, and sat for a long time turning me through very dully. I
stayed on his desk for several days, and then fared forth again on my
quest, valued this trip at a hundred dollars.

After the initial formalities, I fell this time first into the hands of
a driving sort of fellow who had the air of being perpetually up to his
neck in work, and who handed me to his wife with the remark: "Here's
another job for you tomorrow. Make a careful, working synopsis of the
story, and I'll dip into the manuscript here and there when I come home
to get a line on the style and general character of the thing." The
next night, after rustling energetically through me, he wrote out his
report, and, passing it to his wife, said: "There are no outright
mis-statements of fact as to the plot in that, are there?"

I next fell in the way of a fashionable character just leaving for a
week-end, who re