. I held out my
hand and he looked right over it, and marched by."

"Ah!" said Mr. Tombey, who was a wealthy New Zealand landowner; "and now,
why do you suppose he did that?"

"Why? I'll tell you why. It's all about that girl."

"Miss Smithers, do you mean?" said Tombey the big, with a curious flash
of his deep-set eyes.

"Yes, Miss Smithers. She wrote a book, and I bought the book for fifty
pounds, and stuck a clause in that she should give me the right to
publish anything she wrote for five years at a price--a common sort of
thing enough in one way and another, when you are dealing with some idiot
who don't know any better. Well, as it happened this book sold like
wild-fire; and, in time the young lady comes to me and wants more money,
wants to get out of the hanging clause in the agreement, wants
everything, like a female Oliver Twist; and when I say, 'No, you don't,'
loses her temper, and makes a scene. And it turns out that what she
wanted the money for was to take a sick sister, or cousin, or aunt, or
someone, out of England; and when she could not do it, and the relation
died, then she emigrates, and goes and tells the people on board ship
that it is all my fault."

"And I suppose that that is a conclusion that you do not feel drawn to,
Mr. Meeson?"

"No Tombey, I don't. Business is business; and if I happen to have got to
windward of the young woman, why, so much the better for me. She's
getting her experience, that's all; and she ain't the first, and won't be
the last. But if she goes saying much more about me, I go for her for
slander, that's sure."

"On the legal ground that the greater the truth, the greater the libel,
I presume?"

"Confound her!" went on Meeson, without noticing his remark, and
contracting his heavy eyebrows, "there's no end to the trouble she has
brought on me. I quarrelled with my nephew about her, and now she's
dragging my name through the dirt here, and I'll bet the story will go
all over New Zealand and Australia."

"Yes," said Mr. Tombey, "I fancy you will find it take a lot of
choking; and now, Mr. Meeson, with your permission I will say a word,
and try and throw a new light upon a very perplexing matter. It never
seems to have occurred to you what an out-and-out blackguard you are, so
I may as well put it to you plainly. If you are not a thief, you are, at
least, a very well-coloured imitation. You take a girl's book and make
hundreds upon hundreds out of it, and give he