Miss Hopkins, it appeared, despised butter-scotch, and abhorred preserved ginger.

“I saw The Author hiking across lots a while since.  Nice, open-hearted, neighborly man, The Author.—­Oh, by the way, Miss Smith:  is it, or is it not written in the Book of Darwin that the gadfly is one of the distinct evolutionary links in the descent of man?”

“Good heavens, certainly not!” cried Miss Hopkins.  And she looked strangely upon Mr. Nicholas Jelnik.

“No?  Thank you.  I was in doubt,” murmured Mr. Jelnik.  The golden flecks danced in and out of his eyes.  “But we were speaking of The Author:  may I ask how The Author appeals to you as a human being, Miss Hopkins?”

“I do not know him as a human being,” Miss Hopkins admitted.

Mr. Jelnik looked surprised.  His eyebrows went up.

“Oh, come, now!” he demurred.  “He isn’t so bad as all that!”

“Oh, dear me, no!” Alicia protested, in a shocked voice.  “He may have abrupt manners and say unexpected things, but he is perfectly respectable, Miss Hopkins!  There’s never been a breath against his character.  I thought you knew,” purred the hussy, demurely.  “Why, he’s dined at the White House, and lunched and motored and yachted with royalties, and lectured before the D.A.R.’s themselves!  And he belongs to at least a dozen societies.  There are,”—­Alicia was enjoying her naughty self immensely—­“good authors and bad authors.  Sometimes the bad authors are good, and sometimes the good authors are bad.  But our author is more than either:  he’s It!”

“You entirely and strangely misunderstand me.”  Miss Hopkins spoke with the deadly gentleness of suppressed fury.  “I had no slightest intention of reflecting upon the character of so eminent a writer, with whose career, Miss Gaines, I am thoroughly familiar.  I was merely trying to explain that I had never met him.”

“Oh, I see.  Of course!  I should have remembered that!”

Miss Hopkins’s entire contempt for Alicia’s mentality overcame any suspicion she might have entertained.  Also, she had come determined to discover what she could about The Author, and she was not one lightly to be put aside.  She said, smiling tolerantly: 

“Of course you should!  But mayn’t I congratulate you upon knowing him?  Having him here in Hynds House almost justifies turning the old place into a boarding-house, doesn’t it?”

“The Author,” Mr. Jelnik remarked gently, “has a very sensitive soul.  I shudder to think what the effect upon him would be were he to hear himself referred to as a boarder.  My dear Miss Hopkins, never, never let him hear you designate him ’boarder’!”

“Who’s talking about boarders?” asked a hearty voice, and Doctor Richard Geddes came in like a gale of mountain air.

“Miss Hopkins.  She thinks The Author’s presence almost justifies the turning of Hynds House into a boarding-house,” answered Mr. Jelnik.  He added, thoughtfully, “Curious notion; isn’t it?”