"Reuben
Hallard" arrived in a dark red cover with a white paper label. The six
copies lay on the table and looked at Peter as though he had had nothing
whatever to do with their existence. He looked down upon them, opened one
of them very tenderly, read half a page and felt that it was the best stuff
he'd ever seen. He read the rest of the page and thought that the author,
whoever the creature might be, deserved, imprisonment for writing such
nonsense.
The feeling of strangeness towards it all was increased by the fact that
Bobby had, with the exception of the final proofs--these Peter had read
down by the sea--done most of the proof-correcting. It was a task for which
his practical common sense and lack of all imagination admirably fitted
him. There, at any rate, "Reuben Hallard" was, ready to face all the world,
to go, perhaps, to the farthest Hebrides, to be lost in all probability,
utterly lost, in the turgid flood of contemporary fiction.
There was a dedication "To Stephen"... How surprised Stephen would be! He
looked at the chapter headings--An Old Man with a Lantern--the Road at
Night.... Sun on the Western Moor--Stevenson--Tushery all of it! How they'd
tear it to bits, those papers!
He laughed to himself to think that there had once been a day when he had
thought that the thing would make his fortune! And yet--he turned the pages
over tenderly--there might be something to be said for it, Miss Monogue had
thought well of it.
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