THE SILVER CORD.
BY SHIRLEY BROOKS.
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CHAPTER XX.
Letter from Archibald Vernon to Charles Hawkesley.
“My dear Charles,
“I am sure I do not know why we see so little of one another, except that having carefully examined the map, having discovered that between your new house and my Patmos, there is exactly distance enough for an agreeable and healthy walk, and having solemnly agreed with myself that duty and pleasure alike enjoined my coming to visit you at the earliest opportunity, I have not found that opportunity. With your merciless business habit, you will harshly demand what on earth I have to do that should prevent my putting on my hat any fine morning, and marching across to Maida Hill. This stern question I might find it difficult to answer—and yet not difficult, only you hate long letters, and I cannot write short ones. You will, I foresee, hand this over to Beatrice, with instructions to find out what her father wants, and tell you when you come out of that hermetically sealed study for the glass of sherry and biscuit that are to fortify you for another onslaught upon some less fortunate author, another act of the new comedy, another chapter of the forthcoming novel, another column of proof that some king of the earth ought to be promptly deposed. My dear multifarious son-in-law, I want you to be good enough to read this letter for yourself.
“Thank you much for the books. Indeed I ought to have thanked you long ago. I have not read them, but Beatrice’s pretty paper-knife has been at work on them, and I propose to begin them one of these days. I hear you, sir, and procrastination is a long and sonorous word, and is also the thief of time. Never mind. Let me go on in my own way. I admire, but do not envy you regular men, who do everything at the proper time, and are always to be relied upon. I got my notions of literary labour before the new type of author came out, and I am now too old to change my habits. Perhaps, if I had been more of a man of business, I should have been dating to you from my own villa, and sending you this letter by my own servant, instead of writing from a boarding house, and hoping that the maid will not omit to stick on a penny stamp when it shall please her