Once, though, she got caught, and George very nearly took all the reviewing away from her, for he had to stand the racket himself, of course. She had actually said at the end of the review that it was a pity Mr. ---- I forget the author's name--did not relieve our anxiety as to the perpetrator of the hellish crime, which to the very end he allowed to remain shrouded in obscurity. Well, as a matter of fact, there was a hanging scene and dying confession in the last chapter but one, but Ariadne unfortunately burnt that before she had got to it. She was using the novel as a screen to keep the draught off the flame for heating her tongs, and so she never read that part, and had to make up her own end. The editor of _The Bittern_ had to acknowledge the error and apologize in a footnote, because the author threatened a libel action. Ariadne doesn't care about meeting that man in society! It is fairer at any rate for Ariadne to review books than George, because she doesn't write them. People who write books shouldn't have the right to say what they think of other people's; it is like a mother listening to tales in the nursery, and putting one child in the corner to please another. I once went into the study and saw George walking up and down, and throwing light bits of furniture about. "D--m the fellow! He's stolen the babe unborn of an excellent plot of mine, and mauled it and ruined it, beyond recognition!" It was no use my putting in my word, and saying, "Well, then, George, you can use it again." He went on fuming and fussing, loudly dictating a regular corker of a review. "I'll let him have it! Go on, please, Miss Mander. '_The signal ineptitude of this author's_----'" I am sure that was going to be a very unpleasant review to read, though I never saw it in print. Ariadne is sentimental, and doesn't care for realistic novels at all, which is a pity, as George's greatest friend, and the person who comes oftenest to this house, is a realist, and wrote a novel called _The Laundress_. He lived in Shoreditch in a tenement dwelling for a whole year to learn how to write it from the laundresses themselves,--he went to tea with a different laundress every afternoon? The one he wrote about had three diamond rings and three husbands to match. He himself wore flannel shirts then, not nice frock-coats such as he has now, but the flannel shirts weren't because he was poor, but so as not to frighten the laundresses by looking too smart. Then the book came out, and there was a great fuss about it, and it was published at sixpence, and our cook bought it, and it lies on the kitchen-table beside the cookery-book. That is the reason Mr. Aix, being a realist, makes more money than Papa, who is an idealist. You see, Duchesses and Countesses want to hear all about laundresses, just as much as cooks do, but though Duchesses and Countesses are interested in mediæval knights and maidens, cooks--nor yet laundresses--aren't.