ys. Said it meaningly,
too."

"Oh, well," said Dora, "I had better go. It must be nearly time to dress
for dinner. What are you going to wear, Bee?"

And Hugh was promptly shelved to permit of this more important point
being properly discussed.

CHAPTER XVI

WOOING THE MUSE

"Five thousand words," muttered Hugh, and then tilted back in the steady
chair he had abstracted from the kitchen for the very purpose. Yes, this
was going to be one of his good days--he willed it so. The mood was not
there certainly, but then, now the finishing of the book had become a
pressing necessity, the mood never was there; it was like a tantalizing
butterfly that flitted a second in his face and then led him a desperate
chase through a tangle of undergrowth that never ended.

Five thousand words! Yes, he could if he would. Let him brace up his
sinews, summon up his blood! The mere act of battling for it hard and
earnestly would probably bring the mood back--it had done so many a time
ere this.

Let him read over the last chapter or so to get in touch again with his
characters.

Great heavens, what balderdash it all was! He crashed his chair on to
its four legs again and reached out blindly for his pen. And now he
scored pages and pages across with heavy black lines; he seemed to take
a vicious pleasure after a little time in destroying what he had written
and went along with his lips tight and a hard look in his eye, weighing
every sentence in the balance and adjusting that balance to such nicety
that he found nearly every sentence wanting. Out they came: occasionally
a fierce black zig-zag on the page he considered sufficient for future
deliberations, but more frequently it needed greater physical activity
to relieve his state of mind and he ripped the page fiercely off the
block, crumpled it in his hand and sent it flying across the room.

If Miss Bibby had happened in that morning she would have come to the
conclusion that the eccentricity of genius led it to divert itself at
times with the game of paper snowballs.

The heavy slaughtering brought a degree of relief; he looked over his
shoulder at the paper-strewn floor and felt a twinge of
self-satisfaction: there were authors who would have passed the work
quite complacently or at most have considered a little polishing was all
it needed. For him it was satisfaction or snowballs--no medium course.
But then he groaned, for his eye of a sudden fell on a calendar. Fell