it was late, because next day was press day. We hadn't
been there ten minutes when Hobart's name was sent in, with the message
that he was just going home, and was Mrs. Hobart ready to come?

'Well, I'm not,' said Jane to me. 'I shall be quite ten minutes more.
I'll go and tell him.'

She went outside and called down, 'Go on, Oliver. I shall be some
time yet.'

'I'll wait,' he called up, and Jane came back into the room.

We went on for quite ten minutes.

When we went down, Hobart was standing by the front door, waiting.

'How did you track me?' Jane asked.

'Your mother told me where you'd gone. She called at the _Haste_ on her
way home. Good-night, Gideon.'

They went out together, and I returned to the office, irritated a little
by being hurried. It was just like Lady Pinkerton, I thought, to have
gone round to Hobart inciting him to drag Jane from my office. There had
been coldness, if not annoyance, in Hobart's manner to me.

Well, confound him, it wasn't to be expected that he should much care
for his wife to write for the _Fact_. But he might mind his own business
and leave Jane to mind hers, I thought.

Peacock came in at this point, and we worked till midnight.

Peacock opened a parcel of review books from Hubert Wilkins--all tripe,
of course. He turned them over, impatiently.

'What fools the fellows are to go on sending us their rubbish. They
might have learnt by now that we never take any notice of them,' he
grumbled. He picked out one with a brilliant wrapper--'_A Cabinet
Minister's Wife_, by Leila Yorke.... That woman needs a lesson,
Gideon. She's a public nuisance. I've a good mind--a jolly good
mind--to review her, for once. What? Or do you think it would be
_infra dig_? Well, what about an article, then--we'd get Neilson to
do one--on the whole tribe of fiction-writing fools, taking Lady
Pinkerton for a peg to hang it on? ... After all, we _are_ the organ
of the Anti-Potter League. We ought to hammer at Potterite fiction as
well as at Potterite journalism and politics. For two pins I'd get
Johnny Potter to do it. He would, I believe.'

'I'm sure he would. But it would be a little too indecent. Neilson shall
do it. Besides, he'd do it better. Or do it yourself.'

'Will you?'

'I will not. My acquaintance with the subject is inadequate, and I've no
intention of improving it.'

In the end Peacock did it himself. It was pretty good, and pretty
murderous. It came out in next week's numb