After a brief retreat and rapid toilet she reappeared with Harry's
manuscript in her hand, and with simple craft displaying the roll, she
said, "This is for us to read--a true story. It is not in print yet, but
Mr. Harry Musgrave writes a plain hand. We are to give him our opinion
of it. I believe that, after all, he will be a poor author--one of my
heroes, Lady Latimer."
"One of your heroes, Elizabeth? There is nothing very heroic in Mr.
Logger," rejoined my lady softening, and holding out her hand for the
manuscript. "Is the young man very ill?"
"No, no--not so ill that we need fear his dying inglorious without
giving the world something to remember him by, but discouraged by the
dicta of friends and physicians, who consign him to idleness and
obscurity for a year or two."
"Which idleness and obscurity I presume it is your wish to alleviate?"
said Lady Latimer with half-contemptuous resignation. "Come to dinner
now: we will read your hero's story afterward."
Lady Latimer's personal interests were so few that it was a necessity
for her generous soul to adopt the interests of other people. She kept
Bessie reading until eleven o'clock, when she was dismissed to bed and
ordered to leave the manuscript below, lest she should sit up and read
it when she ought to be asleep. But what Bessie might not do my lady was
quite at liberty to do herself, and she made an end of the tale before
she retired.
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