"
Mrs. Pett rose in slow horror.
"Peter! Tell me! Don't try to break it gently."
"Ann wrote a book of poetry and I had it published for her."
Mrs. Pett sank back in her chair.
"Oh!" she said--it would have been hard to say whether with
relief or disappointment. "Whatever did you make such a fuss for?
Why did you want to be so mysterious?"
"It was all my fault, really," proceeded Mr. Pett. "I ought to
have known better. All I thought of at the time was that it would
please the child to see the poems in print and be able to give
the book to her friends. She did give it to her friends," he went
on ruefully, "and ever since she's been trying to live it down.
I've seen her bite a young fellow's head off when he tried to
make a grand-stand play with her by quoting her poems which he'd
found in his sister's book-shelf."
"But, in the name of goodness, what has all this to do with young
Crocker?"
"Why, it was this way. Most of the papers just gave Ann's book a
mention among 'Volumes Received,' or a couple of lines that
didn't amount to anything, but the _Chronicle_ saw a Sunday feature
in it, as Ann was going about a lot then and was a well-known
society girl. They sent this Crocker boy to get an interview from
her, all about her methods of work and inspirations and what not.
We never suspected it wasn't the straight goods. Why, that very
evening I mailed an order for a hundred copies to be sent to me
when the thing appeared.
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