Arrived there, a civil clerk took her card--which was her mother's--and soon returning, asked if she had an appointment. "No, I have not, but pray ask Mr. Channing or Mr. Wyndham to see me; I will not stay more than a few minutes." The young man smiled slightly; he was accustomed to such assurances. Almost as Katherine spoke, a stout "country gentleman" looking person came into the warehouse, slightly raising his hat as he passed her. A sudden inspiration prompted her to say, "Pray excuse me, but are you Mr. Wyndham?"
"Then do let me speak to you for five minutes."
"With pleasure," said the great publisher, graciously, and ushered her into a sort of literary loose box or small enclosure in the remote back-ground.
"I have ventured to bring you a manuscript," began Katherine, smiling with all her might, with an abject desire to propitiate the arbiter of her mother's fate.
"So I see," he returned, ruefully but politely.
"It is a beautiful story, and I thought it ought to be published by a great house like yours," pursued Katherine.
"Thank you," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "Pray is it your own?"
"Mine! Oh dear no! It is my mother's. She is not very strong, so _I_ brought it."
There was a slight faltering in her voice that suggested a good deal to her hearer. "Then you are not Mrs. W. Liddell," glancing at the card, "but Mrs. Liddell's daughter. Pray put down that heavy parcel. Three volumes, I suppose?"
"Yes, three volumes, but they are not very long, and the story is most interesting."
"So much the better. Well, Miss Liddell, I will look at the manuscript, or rather our reader shall, and let you know the result in due course; but I must warn you that we are rather overdone with three-volume novels, and there are already a large number of manuscripts awaiting perusal, so you must not expect our verdict for some little time."
"When you will, but oh! as soon as you can," she urged.
"I will keep your address, and you shall hear at the earliest date we can manage. Good-morning. Very damp, uncomfortable day."
Katherine felt herself dismissed, and almost forgot her ulterior intention. "Would you be so very good as to let me look at the Directory, if you have one?"
"Certainly," said Wyndham, who was slipping the card under the string of poor Katherine's parcel. "Here, Tompkins, let this young lady see the Directory. Excuse me--I am a good deal pressed for time;" and with a bow he went off, the manuscript under his arm.