You'll have to talk to her yourself. I'm not going to say any more.
"Don't forget that Friday is the St. Leonards' 'At Home' day. I've
promised Janie that you shall be there in all your best clothes.
(Don't tell her I'm calling her Janie. It might offend her. But
nobody calls her Miss St. Leonard.) Everybody is coming, and all the
children are having their hair washed. You will have it all your own
way down here. There's no other celebrity till you get to Boss
Croker, the Tammany man, the other side of Ilsley Downs. Artists
they don't count. The rumour was all round the place last week that
you were here incognito in the person of a dismal-looking Johnny,
staying at the 'Fisherman's Retreat,' who used to sit all day in a
punt up the backwater drinking whisky. It made me rather mad when I
saw him. I suppose it was the whisky that suggested the idea to
them. They have got the notion in these parts that a literary man is
a sort of inspired tramp. A Mrs. Jaggerswade--or some such name--
whom I met here on Sunday and who is coming on Friday, took me aside
and asked me 'what sort of things' you said when you talked? She
said she felt sure it would be so clever, and, herself, she was
looking forward to it; but would I--'quite between ourselves'--advise
her to bring the children.
"I say, you will have to talk seriously to Veronica. Country life
seems to agree with her. She's taken to poaching already--she and
the twins.
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