The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lowest Rung, by Mary Cholmondeley

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Title: The Lowest Rung
Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy

Author: Mary Cholmondeley

Release Date: February 12, 2008 [eBook #24587]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE LOWEST RUNG

Together with The Hand on
the Latch, St. Luke's Summer
and The Understudy

by

MARY CHOLMONDELEY

Author of "Red Pottage"

London
John Murray, Albemarle Street, W.
1908

Copyright, 1908, in the
United States of America

TO
HOWARD STURGIS

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE LOWEST RUNG 33

THE HAND ON THE LATCH 82

SAINT LUKE'S SUMMER 107

THE UNDERSTUDY 156

PREFACE

I have been writing books for five-and-twenty years, novels of which I
believe myself to be the author, in spite of the fact that I have been
assured over and over again that they are not my own work. When I have
on several occasions ventured to claim them, I have seldom been
believed, which seems the more odd as, when others have claimed them,
they have been believed at once. Before I put my name to them they were
invariably considered to be, and reviewed as, the work of a man; and for
years after I had put my name to them various men have been mentioned to
me as the real author.

I remember once, when I was very young and shy, how at one of my first
London dinner-parties a charming elderly man discussed one of my
earliest books with such appreciation that I at last remarked that I had
written it myself. If I had looked for a surprised flash of delight at
the fact that so much talent was palpitating in white muslin beside him,
I was doomed to be disappointed. He gravely and gently said, "I know
that to be untrue," and the conversation was turned to other subjects.

One man did indeed actually announce himself to be the au