ng
himself in his impatience. 'I--I mean, Trixie, that I can't correct
these proofs as they ought to be corrected while you stay here
chattering.'

'I'll go in a minute, Mark; but you won't have time to correct them
before dinner, you know. When did you write it?'

'What _does_ it matter when I wrote it!' said Mark irritably; 'if it
hadn't been written the proofs wouldn't be here, would they? Is there
anything else you would like to know--_how_ I wrote it, where I wrote
it, why I wrote it? You seem to think it a most extraordinary thing
that anything I write should be printed at all, Trixie.'

'I don't know why you should speak like that, Mark,' said Trixie,
rather hurt; 'you know a little while ago you never expected such a
thing yourself. I can't help wanting to know all I can about it. What
_will_ you say to Uncle Solomon?' she added, with a little quiver of
laughter in her voice. 'You promised him to give up literature, you
know.'

'Don't you remember the Arab gentleman in the poem?' said Mark
lightly. 'He agreed to sell his steed, but when the time came it
didn't come off--he didn't come off, either--_he_ "flung them back
their gold," and rode away. I shall fling Uncle Solomon back _his_
gold, metaphorically, and gallop off on my Pegasus.'

'Ma won't like that,' prophesied Trixie, shaking her head wisely.

'No; mother objects to that kind of horse-exercise, and, ahem, Trixie,
it might be as well to say nothing about it to any of them just at
present. There will only be a fuss about it, and I can't stand that.'

Trixie promised silence. 'I'm so glad about it, though, you can't
think, Mark,' she said; 'and this isn't one of your _great_ books,
either, you said, didn't you?'

'No,' said Mark; 'it's not one of _them_. I haven't put my best work
into it.'

'You put your best work into the two that came back, didn't you?'
asked Trixie naively. 'But they won't come back any more, will they?
They'll be glad of them if this is a success.'

'Fladgate will be glad of them, I fancy, in any case. I've got a
chance at last, Trixie. A chance at last!'

Later that night he locked himself in the room which he used as a
sitting-room and bedroom combined, and set himself, not without
repugnance, to go steadily through the proofs, and make the
acquaintance of the work he had made his own.

Much has been said of the delight with which an author reads his first
proofs, and possibly the sensation is a wholly pleasurable o