the chemist's clerk, a childish resentment comes
over me."

"Good heavens!" cried Kate.

It was not Hugh's pettiness that called forth the exclamation, but the
saddening circumstance that she had put her chopped and seasoned parsley
into the sweet mixture that represented the pudding.

"How," she asked pathetically, "can I get ready to feed a lion when it
gets under my feet all the time like this? Is there _nothing_ you can
do? Couldn't you go and play wild beasts under the piano for a little
time? Max and Muffie would help you growl."

Hugh abandoned the dresser which rattled ominously as he took his solid
weight off.

"Max and Muffie remind me of Miss Bibby, and Miss Bibby reminds me of a
duty to be performed," he said; "I've promised to read her story. Well,
if England expects every man this day to do his duty, Australia may
expect duty this day to do a man."

Kate heard him going heavily back to his study.

CHAPTER XVIII

AN EDITING PENCIL

And now he swept all his own work out of the way and, sitting firmly
down once more upon his chair from the kitchen, spread out upon his
time-be desk, Miss Bibby's MS.

He had read it through no less than three times.

At the first reading he had laughed, indeed he had leaned back in his
chair and fairly yelled with laughing.

For he could so plainly recognize his own influence, and the incongruity
of it against the gentle, colourless background of the tale was in truth
amusing. A more ludicrous effect could hardly have been obtained, if
Miss Bibby herself, clad in the limp lavender muslin, had been
encountered lashing about with a stockwhip or hurling blue metal wildly
in all directions.

But then he sobered himself with an effort and read the tale again. And
this time a hopeless look settled upon his face. It would have been so
pleasant, so easy to praise warmly, point out a trifling error or two
and so have done with his self-imposed task.

But it was so plain, so very plain that the woman could not
write,--would never write. Her characters were paper dolls and lay on
the typed sheets as flat as paper dolls. No breath of air, of motion,
was in all the tale. No glint of humour, no suspicion of literary grace,
not one even faintly original observation made it possible for him to
hope there might be any promise of success before the woman. Stereotyped
characters talking stereotyped talk and working out a thin stereotyped
little plot, such was the hopele