That should finish him, I thought, and raced up the terraces and into the house. Gad met me. “Hey,” he began, “what about Big Ears?”

“Gaddy, I can trust you like everything, can’t I?”

“That’s what I’m living for,” grinned he.

“Well, you see, Big Ears is trying to flirt with me, and it puts me in a fix as Edmée might think it was my fault. He is so dead gone on her.”

“Did the Actem tell you that?”

“Well, yes, but you’ll treat it confidentially?”

“And that put you off Big Ears—well, well, I never thought I’d be grateful to the Actem. I must give her a pair of gloves for this.”

I asked what he meant, but he only cackled and kept on saying, “So she dished Big Ears by that, God bless m’soul, ha! ha!”

Mrs. Crasterton came in and wanted to hear the joke, but Gaddy winked at me and dived into his paper. Mr. Wilting’s paper had come and my article was in it. I was painfully self-conscious about it, but Mrs. Crasterton praised it kindly, and I was longing for the money. I telephoned to Mr. Wilting to thank him and to ask how much I should be paid, hoping it would be enough for an evening dress.

“My dear little girl,” he said, “you wouldn’t get any money for that. I put it in out of my interest to keep you before the public.” My acute disappointment was equalled by the feeling that I had been vulgar and pushing in bringing myself to notice. How was I to make a few shillings for an evening dress? I had suffered the notice solely to that end.

I was called to the drawing-room to meet a young man who said he was a free lance, and by interviewing me could make a guinea. I said I nearly fainted each time I was mentioned in the papers, and was trying my very best to get out of sight and be forgotten, could he not interview some important person instead? He said he would be surer of the guinea if he wrote about me, and pled with me to be a good sport and help him. He was one of a number who had come with similar pleas and who were able to make a guinea by submitting me to the torture of fresh notice, but I couldn’t make a penny anywhere. The few shillings Ma had given me in pocket money were running out because people bullied me for copies of my book—said I must present one to the public library and to this and that—and I had to buy these at Cunningham and Bucklers. I felt pecked to death for lack of a few pounds. Hopes of an evening gown receded.

Mrs. Crasterton cut the interview short by calling me to the telephone. Sir James Hobnob wanted to speak to me. I found that it was Goring Hardy. “Say,” he drawled, “I enjoyed you so much yesterday that we must make a break for it again this afternoon. I’ll ring the Old Campaigner again in a few minutes.” He left me to do my own prevaricating.