Bildungsromans; Christian fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
“She is pleased to think that I love her!” thought Walter. “She leans to
me a little! When the gray hair comes and the wrinkles, it will be a
gracious memory that she was so loved by one who had but his life to
give her! ‘He was poor,’ she will say, ‘but I have not found the riches
he would have given me! I have been greatly loved!’”
I believe myself, she was ruminating a verse that had come to her in the
summer-house, while Walter was weeping by her side.
A door opened, and Sefton came in.
“Have you seen the ‘Onlooker’?” he said--a journal at the time in much
favor with the more educated populace. “There is a review in it that
would amuse you.”
“Of what?” she asked, listlessly.
“I didn’t notice the name of the book, but it is a poem, and just your
sort, I should say. The article is in the ‘Onlooker’s’ best style.”
“Pray let me see it!” she answered, holding out her hand.
“I will read it to you, if I may.”
She did not object. He sat down a little way from her, and read.
He had not gone far before Walter knew, although its name had not
occurred as Sefton read, that the book was his own. The discovery
enraged him: how had the reviewer got hold of it when he himself had
seen no copy except Lufa’s? It was a puzzle he never got at the root of.
Probably some one he had offended had contrived to see as much of it, at
the printer’s or binder’s, as had enabled him to forestall its
appearance with the most stinging, mocking, playfully insolent paper
that had ever rejoiced the readers of the “Onlooker.” But he had more to
complain of than rudeness, a thing of which I doubt if any reviewer is
ever aware. For he soon found that, by the blunder of reviewer or
printer, the best of the verses quoted were misquoted, and so rendered
worthy of the epithet attached to them. This unpleasant discovery was
presently followed by another--that the rudest and most contemptuous
personal remark was founded on an ignorant misapprehension of the
reviewer’s own; while in ridicule of a mere misprint which happened to
carry a comic suggestion on the face of it, the reviewer surpassed
himself.
As Sefton read, Lufa laughed often and heartily: the thing was
gamesomely, cleverly, almost brilliantly written. Annoyed as he was,
Walter did not fail to note, however, that Sefton did not stop to let
Lufa laugh, but read quietly on. Suddenly she caught the paper from his
hand, for she was as quick as a kitten, saying:
“I must see who the author of the precious book is!”
Her cousin did not interfere, but sat watching her--almost solemnly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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