He was not a publisher by nature.  He had drifted into the trade and success, but beneath a polish of acquaintance retained a fine awe for a book as such.  In early life he had had such shining things on a shiny table in a parlour.  He had a similar awe for his daughter, who had been born after his entry into the trade, and who had the literary flavour—­a flavour so pronounced that he dragged her by the heels into any conversation with us who hewed his raw material, expecting, I suppose, to cow us.  For the greater good of this young lady he had bought the Bi-Monthly—­one of the portentous political organs.  He had, they said, ideas of forcing a seat out of the party as a recompense.

It didn’t matter much what was the nature of my series of articles.  I was to get the atmosphere of cities as I had got those of the various individuals.  I seemed to pay on those lines, and Miss Polehampton commended me.

“My daughter likes ... eh ... your touch, you know, and....”  His terms were decent—­for the man, and were offered with a flourish that indicated special benevolence and a reference to the hundred pounds.  I was at a loss to account for his manner until he began to stammer out an indication.  Its lines were that I knew Fox, and I knew Churchill and the Duc de Mersch, and the Hour.  “And those financial articles ... in the Hour ... were they now?... Were they ... was the Trans -Greenland railway actually ... did I think it would be worth one’s while ... in fact....” and so on.

I never was any good in a situation of that sort, never any good at all.  I ought to have assumed blank ignorance, but the man’s eyes pleaded; it seemed a tremendous matter to him.  I tried to be non-committal, and said:  “Of course I haven’t any right.”  But I had a vague, stupid sense that loyalty to Churchill demanded that I should back up a man he was backing.  As a matter of fact, nothing so direct was a-gate, it couldn’t have been.  It was something about shares in one of de Mersch’s other enterprises.  Polehampton was going to pick them up for nothing, and they were going to rise when the boom in de Mersch’s began—­something of the sort.  And the boom would begin as soon as the news of the agreement about the railway got abroad.

I let him get it out of me in a way that makes the thought of that bare place with its gilt book-backs and its three uncomfortable office-chairs and the ground-glass windows through which one read the inversion of the legend “Polehampton,” all its gloom and its rigid lines and its pallid light, a memory of confusion.  And Polehampton was properly grateful, and invited me to dine with him and his phantasmal daughter—­who wanted to make my acquaintance.  It was like a command to a state banquet given by a palace official, and Lea would be invited to meet me.  Miss Polehampton did not like Lea, but he had to be asked once a year—­to encourage good feeling, I suppose.  The interview dribbled out on those lines.  I asked if it was one of Lea’s days at the office.  It was not.  I tried to put in a good word for Lea, but it was not very effective.  Polehampton was too subject to his assistant’s thorns to be responsive to praise of him.