Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

"Big Game"

Chapter One.

Plans.

It was the old story of woman comforting man in his affliction; the trouble in this instance appearing in the shape of a long blue envelope addressed to himself in his own handwriting. Poor young poet! He had no more appetite for eggs and bacon that morning; he pushed aside even his coffee, and buried his head in his hands.

“Back again!” he groaned. “Always back, and back, and back, and these are my last verses: the best I have written. I felt sure that these would have been taken!”

“So they will be, some day,” comforted the woman. “You have only to be patient and go on trying. I’ll re-type the first and last pages, and iron out the dog’s ears, and we will send it off on a fresh journey. Why don’t you try the Pinnacle Magazine? There ought to be a chance there. They published some awful bosh last month.”

The poet was roused to a passing indignation.

“As feeble as mine, I suppose! Oh, well, if even you turn against me, it is time I gave up the struggle.”

“Even you” was not in this instance a wife, but “only a sister,” so instead of falling on her accuser’s neck with explanations and caresses, she helped herself to a second cup of coffee, and replied coolly—

“Silly thing! You know quite well that I do nothing of the sort, so don’t be high-falutin. I should not encourage you to waste time if I did not know that you were going to succeed in the end. I don’t think; I know!”

“How?” queried the poet. “How?” He had heard the reason a dozen times before, but he longed to hear it again. He lifted his face from his hands—an ideal face for a poet; clean-cut, sensitive, with deep-set eyes, curved lips, and a finely-modelled chin. “How do you know?”

“I feel!” replied the critic simply. “Of course, I am prejudiced in favour of your work; but that would not make it haunt me as if it were my own. I can see your faults; you are horribly uneven. There are lines here and there which make me cold; lines which are put in for the sake of the rhyme, and nothing more; but there are other bits,”—the girl’s eyes turned towards the window, and gazed dreamily into space—“which sing 

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