at which he worked, beside an open window overlooking his cottage
garden. A tumbler of his beloved roses stood in one corner of the
writing space, up to the cuts in MSS., and roses still ungathered peeped
above the window-sill and drooped from either side. But Langholm had a
soul far below roses at the present moment; his neatly numbered sheets
of ruled sermon-paper were nearing the five hundredth page; his hero and
his heroine were in the full sweep of those emotional explanations which
they had ingeniously avoided for the last three hundred at least; in a
word, Charles Langholm's new novel is being finished while you wait. It
is not one of his best; yet a moment ago there was a tear in his eye,
and now he is grinning like a child at play. And at play he is, though
he be paid for playing, and though the game is only being won after
weeks and months of uphill labor and downhill joy.

At last there is the final ticking of inverted commas, and Charles
Langholm inscribes the autograph for which he is importuned once in a
blue moon, and which the printer will certainly not set up at the foot
of the last page; but the thing is done, and the doer must needs set his
hand to it out of pure and unusual satisfaction with himself. And so,
thank the Lord!

Langholm rose stiffly from the old bureau, where at his best he could
lose all sense of time; for the moment he was bent double, and faint
with fasting, because it was his mischievous rule to reach a given point
before submitting to the physical and mental distraction of a meal. But
to-day's given point had been the end of his book, and for some happy
minutes Langholm fed on his elation. It was done at last, yet another
novel, and not such a bad one after all. Not his best by any means, but
perhaps still further from being his worst; and, at all events, the
thing was done. Langholm could scarcely grasp that fact, though there
was the last page just dry upon the bureau, and most of the rest lying
about the room in galley-proofs or in typewritten sheets. Moreover, the
publishers were pleased; that was the joke. It was nothing less to
Langholm when he reflected that the final stimulus to finish this book
had been the prospect and determination of at last writing one to please
himself. And this reflection brought him down from his rosy clouds.

It was the day of the Uniacke's garden-party; they had actually asked
the poor author, and the poor author had intended to go. Not that he