and erecting herself looked at him across the bed, "You don't intend
to do anything so cruel."

"Cruel?"

"Yes! Why should you go and waste any publisher's time by getting
him to look at such rubbish? Why should you expose the poor fellow
to the mortification of a perfectly needless refusal? Do you want to
shirk the responsibility--to put it on some one else?"

"No; you know I don't."

"Well, then, tell him yourself that it won't do."

"I have told him."

"What does he say?"

"He doesn't say anything. I can't make out whether he believes me or
not."

"Very well, then; you've done your duty, at any rate." Mrs. Sewell
could not forbear saying also, "If you'd done it at first, David,
there wouldn't have been any of this trouble."

"That's true," owned her husband, so very humbly that her heart
smote her.

"Well, go down and tell him he must stay to dinner, and then try to
get rid of him the best way you can. Your time is really too