“I haven’t had time to copy them yet,” she answered. “Mr. Brandreth wished you to see them; but we keep the readers anonymous, and he thought I had better show them to you all in my handwriting.” “I shouldn’t know the writers. He said I could see them as they are.” “Well, then, I will go and get them for you,” she answered. She left him a moment, and he remained with her father unmolested. The old man sat staring out on the avenue, with his head black against its gathering lights. She gave him the packet she brought back with her, and then she followed him out of the apartment upon the landing, after he had made his acknowledgments and adieux. “I thought,” she said, timidly, “you would like to know that I had given your dollar for these poor children. Was that right?” Ray’s head was so full of his story that he answered vaguely, “My dollar?” Then he remembered. “Oh! Oh yes! It was right--quite right! I’m glad you did it. Miss Hughes! Excuse me; but would you mind telling me whether you have happened to look at the story yourself?” She hesitated, and then answered: “Yes, I’ve read it.” “Oh, then,” he bubbled out, knowing that he was wrong and foolish, but helpless to refrain, “before I read those things, won’t you tell me--I should care more--I should like so much to know what _you_--I suppose I’ve no right to ask!” He tried to make some show of decency about the matter, but in fact he had the heart to ask a dying man his opinion, in that literary passion which spares nothing, and is as protean as love itself in its disguises. “I suppose,” she answered, “that I had no right to read it; I wasn’t asked to do it.” “Oh, yes, you had. I’m very glad you did.” “The opinions about it were so different that I couldn’t help looking at it, and then--I kept on,” she said. “Were they so _very_ different?” he asked, trembling with his author’s sensitiveness, while the implication of praise in her confession worked like a frenzied hope in his brain. “And you kept on? Then it interested you?” She did not answer this question, but said: “None of them thought just alike about it. But you’ll see them”-- “No, no! Tell me what you thought of it yourself! Was there some part that seemed better than the rest?” She hesitated. “No, I would rather not say. I oughtn’t to have told you I had read it.” “You didn’t like it!” “Yes; I did like parts of it. But I musn’t say any more.” “But what parts?” he pleaded. “You mustn’t ask me. The readers’ opinions”--