rutable fashion,
declaring for it as its favourite beverage for the moment, he had become
"popular." Why worry himself ill over the concoction of the bitters;
sharp and strong that was all it asked? Yes, yes, those snowballs on
the floor were quite good enough, let him pick them up and uncrumple
them and pin them back in their places ready for the typewriter.

But Kate came in,--Kate in one of her fresh-looking pin-spot print
frocks. She seemed to exhale something clean, wholesome, stimulating,
though she spoke no word and only laid the morning letters down beside
him and, when he looked round at her, gave him her cheery smile.

He clutched at her plump, print-covered arm.

"For the love of heaven, K," he said, "pick all that paper up off the
floor and take it away."

Kate gave him the soothing hand-stroke that nurses keep for feverish
patients.

"Of course," she said, "certainly, straight away, old boy." She groped
about beneath his knees for the wastepaper basket that would be needed
as vehicle.

Then he heard her breathing a little hard as she stooped here, there and
everywhere for the snowballs.

He did not turn round, but talked during her labours.

"It's not etiquette I know, girl," he said, "I wouldn't dare to present
a hero to the public who let a woman pick up her own handkerchief. But I
always was a cowardly chap, wasn't I? You remember the time I took
Jack's licking at school because I knew if I turned round and let him
see it was the wrong fellow, the master would notice my cheek was puffed
out with toothache and send me straight off to the dentist's."

"Yes, I remember," said Kate, puffing and panting cheerfully about the
room.

"Hurry up, old girl," he said. "In a second I shan't be able to restrain
myself from clutching some of that stuff back."

"And it's genuinely bad?" said Kate, working hard: you might have
imagined her engaged in gathering mushrooms at so much a minute.

"The scum of literary abomination," groaned Hugh.

"And you're certain you're not deceiving yourself."

"Oh, perhaps I am," he said swinging round, "y-y-yes, I'm pretty sure
it's good enough. Seven thousand words, K, seven thousand p-p-precious
words--human nature won't stand it, will it? Let me have another look at
it."

But now Kate was adamant.

"Good enough is not good enough for Hugh Kinross," she said sternly and
made straight off to the kitchen fire with the overflowing basket
clasped firmly in her arms.