have been satisfied with the labour bestowed.

She had worked steadily through the night, the silent night in the
hills, her lamp the only household eye still open in miles of black
slumbering country.

At three o'clock she had flung herself down and snatched a few hours'
sleep, but by seven she was up again, the same quivering excitement in
her veins. A little more polishing, then a fair copy in her very neatest
hand, and she might bear it up to the four o'clock post, and send it
flying forward to the _Evening Mail._

The envelope that would hold it would hold also her destiny, she told
herself. This was the most important crisis of her life; she had
travelled nearly forty years--thirty-six to be exact--along a road of
life, not rough and stony as many a road is, but just dull and level and
monotonous and dusty, as are so many excellent highways. But now she
stood at two crossroads, and saw stretching before her one in no wise
different from that she had traversed so long, and the other a
glittering tempting path springing joyously up a high hill, on the top
of which, in the shade of laurel trees, sat at ease the whole goodly
company of great authors. She fancied they were beckoning to her; she
heard sweet voices from them throughout that feverish night--"Come up
higher, Agnes Bibby," they were saying.

The interview was the first step along this second path. The story,
already promised space for, would be the second. And then, from out the
bitter gloom of the trunk, the novels would emerge, one after the other,
the world graciously holding out its hand for them.

"Miss Bibby," said a mournful voice at the door, "Miss Bibby."

"Oh, dear," sighed Miss Bibby, "what is it now, Max?"

Max entered with a wool door-mat depending from his collar and just
reaching his shoes.

"I have no tail," he said, his lip drooping, "an' Paul an' Muff's got
late big long ones."

"Oh, dear!" said Miss Bibby, after a frantic glance round her own
apartment in search of an appendix, "I have nothing that would do, Max.
Do run away, darling. Pretend you've got a tail, that is just as good."

Max gulped threateningly.

"Laindeers have leal tails," he said.

Again a frantic glance around. "Would a towel do if I pinned it on,
dear?"

Max shook his head.

"In the lawning-loom lere's a tail on the curtains," he said, "but it's
showd on tight."

"Well, ask Paul, ask Anna, ask some one else to look for something for
you; but you mu