"Oh, a boy, a mere boy!" the big red-faced publisher purred in an undertone. "Lothian brought him to me first in Hanover Square. In fact, Lothian asked if he might bring him here to-night. We are doing a little book of his--the first novel he will have had published." Mrs. Toftrees pricked up her ears, so to say. She was really the business head of the Toftrees combination. Her husband did the ornamental part and provided the red-hot plots, but it was she who had invented and carried out the "note," and it was she who supervised the contracts. As Mr. Amberley was well aware, what this keen, pretty and well-dressed little woman didn't know about publishing was worth nothing whatever. "Oh, really," she said, in genuine surprise. "Rather unusual for you, isn't it? Is the boy a genius then?" Amberley shook his head. He hated everything the worthy Toftrees wrote--he had never been able to read more than ten lines of any of the half-dozen books he had published for them. But the Hanover Square side of him had a vast respect for the large sums the couple charmed from the pockets of the public no less than the handsome percentage they put into his own. And a confidential word on business matters with a pretty and pleasant little woman was not without allurement even under the Waggon-roof itself. "Not at all. Not at all," he murmured into a pretty ear. "We are not paying the lad any advance upon royalties!" He laughed a well-fed laugh. "Ince and Amberley's list," he continued, "is accepted for itself!" Mrs. Toftrees smiled back at him. "_Of course_," she murmured. "But I wasn't thinking of the financial side of it. Why? . . . why are you departing from your usual traditions and throwing the shadow of your cloak over this fortunate boy?--if I may ask, of course!" "Well," Amberley answered, and her keen ear detected--or thought that she detected--a slight reluctance in his voice. . . . "Well, Lothian brought him to me, you know." Mrs. Toftrees' face changed and Amberley saw it. She was looking down the table to where Lothian was sitting. Her face was a little flushed, and the expression upon it--though not allowed to be explicit--was by no means agreeable. "Lothian's work is very wonderful," she said--and there was a question in her voice "--you think so, Mr. Amberley?" Bryanstone Square, the Dining Room, asserted itself. Truth to tell, Amberley felt a little uncomfortable and displeased with himself. The fun of the dinner table--the cigarette moment--had rather escaped him. He had got young people round him to-night. He wanted them to be jolly. He had meant to be a good host, to forget his dignities, to unbend and be jolly with them--this fiction-mongering woman was becoming annoying. "I certainly do, Mrs. Toftrees," he replied, with dignity, and a distinct tone of reproof in his voice. Mrs. Toftrees, the cool tradeswoman, gave the great man a soothing smile of complete understanding and agreement.