. "Have I mentioned it?"

"No; but she is about five feet six."

"How the ---- could you know that?"

"You tell Percy's height in his stocking-soles, and when she reached
to his mouth and kissed him she had to stand on her tiptoes so to do."

Tommy said this in a most businesslike tone, but could not help
smacking his lips. He smacked them again when he had to write: "Have
no fear, little woman; I am by your side." Or, "What a sweet child you
are!"

Pym had probably fallen into the way of making the Percys revel in
such epithets because he could not remember the girl's name; but this
delicious use of the diminutive, as addressed to full-grown ladies,
went to Tommy's head. His solemn face kept his secret, but he had some
narrow escapes; as once, when saying good-night to Elspeth, he kissed
her on mouth, eyes, nose, and ears, and said: "Shall I tuck you in,
little woman?" He came to himself with a start.

"I forgot," he said hurriedly, and got out of the room without telling
her what he had forgotten.

Pym's publishers knew their man, and their arrangement with him was
that he was paid on completion of the tale. But always before he
reached the middle he struck for what they called his honorarium; and
this troubled them, for the tale was appearing week by week as it was
written. If they were obdurate, he suddenly concluded his story in
such words as these:

"Several years have passed since these events took place, and the
scene changes to a lovely garden by the bank of old Father Thames. A
young man sits by the soft-flowing stream, and he is calm as the scene
itself; for the storm has passed away, and Percy (for it is no other)
has found an anchorage. As he sits musing over the past, Felicity
steals out by the French window and puts her soft arms around his
neck. 'My little wife!' he murmurs. _The End--unless you pay up by
messenger._"

This last line, which was not meant for the world (but little would
Pym have cared though it had been printed), usually brought his
employers to their knees; and then, as Tommy advanced in experience,
came the pickings--for Pym, with money in his pockets, had important
engagements round the corner, and risked intrusting his amanuensis
with the writing of the next instalment, "all except the bang at the
end."

Smaller people, in Tommy's state of mind, would have hurried straight
to the love-passages; but he saw the danger, and forced his Pegasus
away from them. "Do your day's