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Kit nervous? This hearty, athletic lad fidgeting? Miss Carrington wondered what was on his mind. Being clever she set out to discover indirectly. She had heard a suggestion that she loathed; it had come from Minerva, her maid, and Minerva, true to her name, was, as a rule, right.

Miss Carrington closed her book, first noting the page number, for she scorned bookmarks, laid it on the table, and picked up the latest number of a newspaper supplement devoted to book news.

“Here’s a discussion of Richard Latham’s verse and essays, Kit,” she said. “Quite well done, discriminating, yet laudatory. The reviewer—it’s not signed—considers him an artist who sends out nothing unworthy, who greatly rejoices those of fine perception, consequently the few, yet these to an extent that should compensate him for the smallness of his audience. Really it is praise worth having! I don’t know Richard Latham as I should. I sent Minerva off after I’d read this to buy everything he has published. Cleavedge had only one volume, the one I already owned! So I sent her again to telephone New York, to tell Brentano’s to send me Latham complete. That is the honour of a prophet in his own country!”