"To send to my children." "Ah, yes, your sweet children! Where are they?" she asked. "In the nursery," was George's answer, as if he cared whether we were in the copper or the stockpot! It saved him from having to say Whitby, however. "And now," she said, "do me a great kindness. Buy me your last great book." "There ought to be some of my work here," George replied gravely, and made a move in our direction, where Mrs. Truelove was. Mrs. Truelove sings in the choir at the Church upon the Hill, and so loud she would bring the roof off nearly, but in her own shop she is as mild as a lamb. George asked her for _Dewlaps_ (of which the heroine is a Tuscan cow), and _The Pretty Lady_, of which Lady Scilly is the heroine, and _The Light that was on Land and Sea_, and _Simple Simon_, of which the hero really was a pieman, only an Italian one. Poor Mrs. Truelove looked blank. "I am afraid, Sir, we do not stock them, but I can order----" George interrupted her. "Such is Fame! I have no doubt, _Belle Irene_, that if you were to ask for any one of Aix's books--_The Dustman_, or _The Laundress_, or _Slackbaked!_ you would be offered a plethora of them." Irene took her cue. "But," she drawled, "it is extraordinary! Impossible! Inconceivable! Books like yours, that rejoice the thirsty soul, that refrigerate the arid body, that bring God's great gift of sunshine down into our too gloomy grey homes! I always say this, dear, dear Mr. Vero-Taylor, that you, of all men, have caught the secret of imprisoning the jolly sunbeams. Every page of yours is instinct with light----" It sounded like an advertisement of some new kind of soap. Aunt Gerty didn't like it at all, and in a rage with George she put out her hand suddenly and spilt a vase of flowers in water. "Brute!" she said, and the assistant who mopped up the water kept saying, "Not at all!" not thinking Aunt Gerty meant the gentleman who had just left the shop in haste, but as apologizing for her own stupidity in upsetting the water. "Who was that lady?" I asked Aunt Gerty as we went home, though I knew well enough. "Izzie Lawder, a lady! I remember her--well, perhaps I hadn't better say what I remember her! She and I--she had got on a bit ahead of me even then--played together at the 'Lane' in 'Devil Darling!' ten years ago. She has got on since. Everybody to give her a leg up! You know the sort--dyed hair and interest! She soon left nice honest me behind." "Hadn't you the interest, Aunt Gerty?" I knew she had the other thing. "Don't be impertinent, Miss. Let us get home and tell Lucy. Won't she be electrified!" But Mother wasn't a bit electrified. "All in the way of business, my dear girl!" she said to Aunt Gerty, who chattered about Irene all the rest of that day. "Do subside about my wrongs, if you don't mind. I dare say he wants to get her to play lead in the drama he is writing with Lady Scilly, and that is why he is so civil to her."