"Really, Miss Leech, I don't see how in our magazine we could possibly--"
"Now, Mr. Ethridge!" She held up a reproving finger, laughing roguishly. "But what's the use of our trying to discuss imaginative literature here in your busy office with the telephone ringing every moment--or threatening to ring--and your discouragingly pretty blonde secretary--the minx!--popping in continually to see if we're behaving!"
Ethridge smiled complacently. Why be an ogre?
"I tell you what. Let's have supper at my studio this evening," continued Lucy. "It'll be so much more satisfactory to discuss things sensibly, without interruption."
At breakfast it was finally decided that the series by Perth Dewar should consist of ten stories, including four still to be written.
Ethridge salved his conscience by resolving secretly that they should all be published in the back of the book.
In due course of time the first story appeared. It contained a mean reference to the Knights of Pythias, or Mormonism, or a former Vice-President of the United States, or something; for which reason the issue containing it was suppressed.
Whereupon the buried issue became a Living Issue. The intelligentsia rushed to the rescue with highbrow hue and cry. Round robins were circulated. Newspaper columnists got sarcastic. Liberal cliques chittered. Perth Dewar became suddenly significant.
The issue containing the second story was sold out the day it appeared.
By the time the third one was out, Professor Lion Whelps, of Yale, proved in an article in the Sunday _Times_, that Dewar's attitude toward women was like Turgeniev's, and Professor Brando Methuseleh, of Columbia, discovered he had cadences. Sinclair Lewis inserted a mention of him in the forty-ninth edition of "Babbitt." Nine British novelists hurried over to lecture on him.
He was made. In acknowledgement of his peerless editorial acumen that could discern true genius at a glance, the directors of the magazine doubled his salary and gave him a bonus to keep him from being coaxed away by the "Saturday Evening Pictorial."
Mrs. Whoffin's figure resembled that of the punch-bowl behind which she was standing: it was broad and squat, with a slight tapering at the base. And her mind was like the punch: sweetish and characterless, with scrappy rinds of things floating about in it. Each guest who presented a cup received the same dipperful and the same set of remarks.