* * * * *
There was croquet after lunch--a game at which I am a poor performer.
Miss Derrick and I played the professor and Chase. Chase was a little
better than myself; the professor, by dint of extreme earnestness and
care, managed to play a fair game; and Phyllis was an expert.
"I was reading a book," said she, as we stood together watching the
professor shaping at his ball at the other end of the lawn, "by an
author of the same surname as you, Mr. Garnet. Is he a relation of
yours?"
"I am afraid I am the person, Miss Derrick," I said.
"You wrote the book?"
"A man must live," I said apologetically.
"Then you must have--oh, nothing."
"I could not help it, I'm afraid. But your criticism was very kind."
"Did you know what I was going to say?"
"I guessed."
"It was lucky I liked it," she said with a smile.
"Lucky for me," I said.
"Why?"
"It will encourage me to write another book. So you see what you have
to answer for. I hope it will not trouble your conscience."
At the other end of the lawn the professor was still patting the balls
about, Chase the while advising him to allow for windage and elevation
and other mysterious things.
"I should not have thought," she said, "that an author cared a bit for
the opinion of an amateur."
"It all depends."
"On the author?"
"On the amateur."
It was my turn to play at this point. I missed--as usual.
"I didn't like your heroine, Mr. Garnet."
"That was the one crumpled rose leaf. I have been wondering why ever
since. I tried to make her nice. Three of the critics liked her."
"Really?"
"And the modern reviewer is an intelligent young man. What is a
'creature,' Miss Derrick?"
"Pamela in your book is a creature," she replied unsatisfactorily,
with the slightest tilt of the chin.
"My next heroine shall be a triumph," I said.
She should be a portrait, I resolved, from life.
Shortly after, the game came somehow to an end. I do not understand
the intricacies of croquet. But Phyllis did something brilliant and
remarkable with the balls, and we adjourned for tea, which had been
made ready at the edge of the lawn while we played.
The sun was setting as I left to return to the farm, with the hen
stored neatly in a basket in my hand. The air was deliciously cool and
full of that strange quiet which follows soothingly on the skirts of a
broiling midsummer afternoon. Far away--the sound seemed almost to
come from another world--the tinkle of a sheep bell made itself heard,
deepening the silence. Alone in a sky of the palest blue there
twinkled a small bright star.