"Not yet; but they're sure to now, at any minute, my publisher tells
me."
Mrs. Fetherel's look of apprehension sat oddly on her small features,
which had an air of neat symmetry somehow suggestive of being set in
order every morning by the housemaid. Some one (there were rumors that
it was her cousin) had once said that Paula Fetherel would have been
very pretty if she hadn't looked so like a moral axiom in a copy-book
hand.
Mrs. Clinch received her confidence with a smile. "Well," she said, "I
suppose you were prepared for the consequences of authorship?"
Mrs. Fetherel blushed brightly. "It isn't their coming," she
owned--"it's their coming _now_."
"Now?"
"The Bishop's in town."
Mrs. Clinch leaned back and shaped her lips to a whistle which
deflected in a laugh. "Well!" she said.
"You see!" Mrs. Fetherel triumphed.
"Well--weren't you prepared for the Bishop?"
"Not now--at least, I hadn't thought of his seeing the clippings."
"And why should he see them?"
"Bella--_won't_ you understand? It's John."
"John?"
"Who has taken the most unexpected tone--one might almost say out of
perversity."
"Oh, perversity--" Mrs. Clinch murmured, observing her cousin between
lids wrinkled by amusement. "What tone has John taken?"
Mrs. Fetherel threw out her answer with the desperate gesture of a
woman who lays bare the traces of a marital fist. "The tone of being
proud of my book."
The measure of Mrs. Clinch's enjoyment overflowed in laughter.
"Oh, you may laugh," Mrs. Fetherel insisted, "but it's no joke to me.
In the first place, John's liking the book is so--so--such a false
note--it puts me in such a ridiculous position; and then it has set him
watching for the reviews--who would ever have suspected John of knowing
that books were _reviewed?_ Why, he's actually found out about the
Clipping Bureau, and whenever the postman rings I hear John rush out of
the library to see if there are any yellow envelopes. Of course, when
they _do_ come he'll bring them into the drawing-room and read them
aloud to everybody who happens to be here--and the Bishop is sure to
happen to be here!"
Mrs. Clinch repressed her amusement. "The picture you draw is a lurid
one," she conceded, "but your modesty strikes me as abnormal,
especially in an author. The chances are that some of the clippings
will be rather pleasant reading. The critics are not all union men."