I was viciously prodding up bindweed out of the cottage garden, with
the steel kitchen poker, when the telegraph boy opened the gate.
Unhinging my back, and inducing it into the upright with painful care,
I read a message from my office to the effect that there was some hitch
in regard to the American copyright of a certain article I had passed
for press before leaving; this would necessitate it being thrown out of
the magazine that month. Would I wire back what should go in its place,
as the machines were at a standstill?
Under ordinary circumstances I should merely have waved a hand, and
instantly a suitable substitute would have been on the machines with
scarcely a perceptible pause—that is, if I had been in London. But such
is the witchery of the Flower-patch, that no sooner do I get inside the
gate than I forget every mortal thing connected with my office. And try
how I would, I couldn’t recall what possible articles I had already in
hand that would make exactly six pages and a quarter—the length of the
one held over.
And because I could think of nothing else on the spur of the moment, I
threw down the poker (it was red-rust, alas, when I chanced upon it a
week later) and went indoors and wrote about the cottage and the hills.
When it was published in the magazine, readers very kindly wrote by
the bagful begging for a continuation. It has been continuing—with
perennial requests for more—for some time now. This only shows how
generously tolerant of editors are the readers of periodical literature.
Virginia merely sniffs, “What won’t people buy!”