“It is so very good of you to come,” said Mrs. Puffle.
“Of course it is good of him,” said Josephine; “especially after the way we wrote to him. The truth is, Mr. Brown, we were at our wits’ end to catch you.”
This was an aspect of the affair which our editor certainly did not like. An attempt to deceive anybody else might have been pardonable; but deceit practised against himself was odious to him. Nevertheless, he did forgive it. The poor little creature before him had worked hard, and had done her best. To teach her to be less metaphysical in her writings, and more straightforward in her own practices, should be his care. There is something to a man inexpressibly sweet in the power of protecting the weak; and no one had ever seemed to be weaker than Josephine. “Miss de Montmorenci,” he said, “we will let bygones be bygones, and will say nothing about the letters. It is no doubt the fact that you did write the novel yourself?”
“Every word of it,” said Mrs. Puffle energetically.
“Oh, yes; I wrote it,” said Josephine.
“And you wish to have it published?”
“Indeed I do.”
“And you wish to get money for it?”
“That is the truest of all,” said Josephine.
“Oughtn’t one to be paid when one has worked so very hard?” said Mrs. Puffle.
“Certainly one ought to be paid if it can be proved that one’s work is worth buying,” replied the sage mentor of literature.
“But isn’t it worth buying?” demanded Mrs. Puffle.
“I must say that I think that publishers do buy some that are worse,” observed Josephine.
Mr. Brown with words of wisdom explained to them as well as he was able the real facts of the case. It might be that that manuscript, over which the poor invalid had laboured for so many painful hours, would prove to be an invaluable treasure of art, destined to give delight to thousands of readers, and to be, when printed, a source of large profits to publishers, booksellers, and author. Or, again, it might be that, with all its undoubted merits—and that there were such merits Mr. Brown was eager in acknowledging—the novel would fail to make any way with the public. “A publisher,”—so said Mr. Brown—“will hardly venture to pay you a sum of money down, when the risk of failure is so great.”
“But Polly has written ever so many things before,” said Mrs. Puffle.
“That counts for nothing,” said Miss de Montmorenci. “They were short pieces, and appeared without a name.”
“Were you paid for them?” asked Mr. Brown.
“I have never been paid a halfpenny for anything yet.”
“Isn’t that cruel,” said Mrs. Puffle, “to work, and work, and work, and never get the wages which ought to be paid for it?”
“Perhaps there may be a good time coming,” said our editor. “Let us see whether we can get Messrs. X., Y., and Z. to publish this at their own expense, and with your name attached to it. Then, Miss de Montmorenci—”
“I suppose we had better tell him all,” said Josephine.
“Oh, yes; tell everything. I am sure he won’t be angry; he is so good-natured,” said Mrs. Puffle.
Mr. Brown looked first at one, and then at the other, feeling himself to be rather uncomfortable. What was there that remained to be told? He was good-natured, but he did not like being told of that virtue. “The name you have heard is not my name,” said the lady who had written the novel.
“Oh, indeed! I have heard Mrs. Puffle call you—Polly.”
“My name is—Maryanne.”
“It is a very good name,” said Mr. Brown—“so good that I cannot quite understand why you should go out of your way to assume another.”
“It is Maryanne—Puffle.”
“Oh;—Puffle!” said Mr. Brown.
“And a very good name, too,” said Mrs. Puffle.
“I haven’t a word to say against it,” said Mr. Brown. “I wish I could say quite as much as to that other name—Josephine de Montmorenci.”
“But Maryanne Puffle would be quite unendurable on a title page,” said the owner of the unfortunate appellation.
“I don’t see it,” said Mr. Brown doggedly.
“Ever so many have done the same,” said Mrs. Puffle. “There’s Boz.”
“Calling yourself Boz isn’t like calling yourself Josephine de Montmorenci,” said the editor, who could forgive the loss of beauty, but not the assumed grandeur of the name.
“And Currer Bell, and Jacob Omnium, and Barry Cornwall,” said poor Polly Puffle, pleading hard for her falsehood.
“And Michelangelo Titmarsh! That was quite the same sort of thing,” said Mrs. Puffle.
Our editor tried to explain to them that the sin of which he now complained did not consist in the intention—foolish as that had been—of putting such a name as Josephine de Montmorenci on the title page, but in having corresponded with him—with him who had been so willing to be a friend—under a false name. “I really think you ought to have told me sooner,” he said.
“If we had known you had been a friend of Charles’s we would have told you at once,” said the young wife.
“I never had the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Puffle in my life,” said Mr. Brown. Mrs. Puffle opened her little mouth, and held up both her little hands. Polly Puffle stared at her sister-in-law. “And what is more,” continued Mr. Brown, “I never said that I had had that pleasure.”
“You didn’t tell me that Charles smoked at the Post Office,” exclaimed Mrs. Puffle—“which he swears that he never does, and that he would be dismissed at once if he attempted it?” Mr. Brown was driven to a smile. “I
