"At once," said Gerald. "If you could put away your own work for it, I should be obliged; I have a reason for wishing to get it back directly. And Hamish, you'll mind and give me your real opinion in strict candour." "Do you say that seriously?" asked Hamish, his tone one of grave meaning. "Of coarse I do. Or why should I ask you to read it at all?" "Not very long ago, a friend brought me a work he had written, begging me to look over it, and tell him what I thought of it, without disguise or flattery, just as you do now," spoke Hamish. "Well, I thought he meant it, and did as he requested. Above all, he had said, point out to me the faults. I did point out the faults. I told him my opinion candidly and kindly, and it was not a favourable one. Gerald, I lost my friend from that hour." Gerald laughed. The cases, he thought, were totally dissimilar. Had an angel from Heaven come down and said an unfavourable opinion could be pronounced upon this work of his, he had not believed it. "Don't be afraid, Channing. I shall thank you to give me your true opinion just as though the manuscript belonged to some stranger, who would never know what you said." "I don't like the title," observed Hamish, accepting the conditions. "Not like the title?" "No." Gerald had called it by a title more wonderful than attractive. The good sense of Hamish Channing discovered the mistake at once. "We made it up between us one night over our drink; one put in one word and one another," said Gerald, alluding to sundry confrères of his. "After all, Hamish, it's the book that makes the success, not the title." "But a good book should possess a good title." "Well, the title can go for now; time enough to alter that later," concluded Gerald, rather testily. "You'll lose no time, Channing?" "No more than I can help. To put all my work away you must know to be impracticable, Gerald. But I'll make what haste I can." Hamish went with him to the other room where Mrs. Channing was sitting, and Gerald unbosomed himself to them of his great care; the dilemma which the evening's post had put him in, as to the speedy arrival of his wife. "What on earth to do, I can't tell," he said with a groan. "Lodgings for a family are not found in an hour; and that's the best thing I can do with them yet awhile. If Winny were not an utter simpleton, she'd at least have given me a clear day's warning. And only look at the impossibility of my getting dinner and tea for them tomorrow, and all the rest of the necessaries. I shan't know how to set about it." Hamish glanced at his wife and she at him, and they spoke almost simultaneously. "If you would like to bring them here first, Gerald, do so. You know we shall be happy to see Winny. It may give you a few hours more to fix on lodgings, and they need not move into them until night." Gerald twirled his watch-chain as he stood, and did not at once accept. He was looking very cross.