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“Indeed!” Mrs. Barnes purred. “Very interesting work, I am sure. So nice and intellectual, too; for, of course, you must be looking inside them sometimes.”
“I know the place well,” Mr. Adolphus Barnes, Junior, announced condescendingly—“pass it every day on my way to lunch.”
“So much nicer,” Mrs. Barnes continued, “than any of the ordinary businesses—grocery or drapery, or anything of that sort.”
Miss Maud elevated her eyebrows slightly. Was it likely that she would have looked with eyes of favour upon a young man engaged in any of these inferior occupations?
“There’s money in books, too,” Mr. Barnes declared with sudden inspiration. His prospective son-in-law turned towards him deferentially.
“You are right, sir,” he admitted. “There is money in them. There’s money for those who write, and there’s money for those who sell. My occupation,” he continued, with a modest little cough, “brings me often into touch with publishers, travellers and clerks, so I am, as it were, behind the scenes to some extent. I can assure you,” he continued, looking from Mr. Barnes to his wife, and finally transfixing Mr. Adolphus—“I can assure you that the money paid by some firms of publishers to a few well-known authors—I will mention no names—as advances against royalties, is something stupendous!”
“Ah!” Mr. Barnes murmured, solemnly shaking his head.
“Marie Corelli, I expect, and that Hall Caine,” remarked young Adolphus.
“Seems easy enough to write a book, too,” Mrs. Barnes said. “Why, I declare that some of those we get from the library—we subscribe to a library, Mr. Fitzgerald—are just as simple and straightforward that a child might have written them. No plot whatsoever, no murders or mysteries or anything of that sort—just stories about people like ourselves. I don’t see how they can pay people for writing stories about people just like those one meets every day!”
“I always say,” Maud intervened, “that Spencer means to write a book some day. He has quite the literary air, hasn’t he, mother?”
“Indeed he has!” Mrs. Barnes declared, with an appreciative glance at the gold-rimmed spectacles.
Mr. Fitzgerald modestly disclaimed any literary aspirations.
“The thing is a gift, after all,” he declared, generously. “I can keep accounts, and earn a fair salary at it, but if I attempted fiction I should soon be up a tree.”
Mr. Barnes nodded his approval of such sentiments.
“Every one to his trade, I say,” he remarked. “What sort of salaries do they pay now in the book trade?” he asked guilelessly.
“Very fair,” Mr. Fitzgerald admitted candidly—“very fair indeed.”
“When I was your age,” Mr. Barnes said reflectively, “I was getting—let me see—forty-two shillings a week. Pretty good pay, too, for those days.”
Mr. Fitzgerald admitted the fact.
“Of course,” he said apologetically, “salaries are a little higher now all round. Mr. Howell has been very kind to me—in fact I have had two raises this year. I am getting four pounds ten now.”
“Four pounds ten per week?” Mrs. Barnes exclaimed, laying down her knife and fork.
“Certainly,” Mr. Fitzgerald answered. “After Christmas, I have some reason to believe that it may be five pounds.”
Mr. Barnes whistled softly, and looked at the young man with a new respect.
“I told you that—Mr.—that Spencer was doing pretty well, Mother,” Maud simpered, looking down at her plate.
“Any one to support?” her father asked, transferring a pickle from the fork to his mouth.
“No one,” Mr. Fitzgerald answered. “In fact, I may say that I have some small expectations. I haven’t done badly, either, out of the few investments I have made from time to time.”
“Saved a bit of money, eh?” Mr. Barnes enquired genially.
“I have a matter of four hundred pounds put by,” Mr. Fitzgerald admitted modestly, “besides a few sticks of furniture. I never cared much about lodging-house things, so I furnished a couple of rooms myself some time ago.”
Mrs. Barnes rose slowly to her feet.
“You are quite sure you won’t have a small piece more of beef?” she enquired anxiously.
“Just a morsel?” Mr. Barnes asked, tapping the joint insinuatingly with his carving knife.
“No, I thank you!” Mr. Fitzgerald declared firmly. “I have done excellently.”
“Then if you will put the joint on the sideboard, Adolphus,” Mrs. Barnes directed, “Maud and I will change the plates. We always let the girl go out on Sundays, Mr. Fitzgerald,” she explained, turning to their guest. “It’s very awkward, of course, but they seem to expect it.”
“Quite natural, I’m sure,” Mr. Fitzgerald murmured, watching Maud’s light movements with admiring eyes. “I like to see ladies interested in domestic work.”
“There’s one thing I will say for Maud,” her proud mother declared, plumping down a dish of jelly upon the table, “she does know what’s what in keeping house, and even if she hasn’t to scrape and save as I did when David and I were first married, economy is a great thing when you’re young. I have always said so, and I stick to it.”
“Quite right, Mother,” Mr. Barnes declared.
“If instead of sitting there,” Mrs. Barnes continued in high good humour, “you were to get a bottle of that port wine out of the cellarette, we might drink Mr. Fitzgerald’s health, being as it’s his first visit.”
Mr. Barnes rose to his feet with alacrity. “For a woman with sound ideas,” he declared, “commend me to your mother!”
Maud, having finished her duties, resumed her place by the side of the guest of the evening. Their hands met under the tablecloth for a moment. To the girl, the pleasure of such a proceeding was natural enough, but Fitzgerald asked himself for the fiftieth time why on earth he, who, notwithstanding his present modest exterior, was a young man of some experience, should from such primitive love-making derive a rapture which nothing else in life afforded him. He was, at that moment, content with his future—a future which he had absolutely and finally decided upon. He was content with his father-in-law and his mother-in-law, with Daisy Villa, and the prospect of a Daisy Villa for himself—content, even, with Adolphus! But for Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, these things were not to be! The awakening was even then at hand.
The dining room of Daisy Villa fronted the street, and was removed from it only a few feet. Consequently, the footsteps of passers-by upon the flagged pavement were clearly distinguishable. It was just at the moment when Mrs. Barnes was inserting a few fresh almonds into a somewhat precarious tipsy cake, and Mr. Barnes was engaged with the decanting of the port, that two pairs of footsteps, considerably heavier than those of the ordinary promenader, paused outside and finally stopped. The gate creaked. Mr. Barnes looked up.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed. “What’s that? Visitors?”
They all listened. The front-door bell rang. Adolphus, in response to a gesture from his mother, rose sulkily to his feet.
“Job I hate!” he muttered as he left the room.
The rest of the family, full of the small curiosity of people of their class, were intent upon listening for voices outside. The demeanour of Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, therefore, escaped their notice. It is doubtful, in any case, whether their perceptions would have been sufficiently keen to have enabled them to trace the workings of emotion in the countenance of a person so magnificently endowed