Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/136

 Saving Club, which will occupy him about half an hour."

I found the Reverend Mr. Metcalf at half-past eleven. He was writing when I entered. I noticed that he covered his MS. with blotting paper as if he were afraid that I should read it. It may have been his next sermon. I chose to pretend that I thought it was something else.

"If that is another story, Mr. Metcalf," I said, "please give me the first refusal of it."

He grew quite white and looked at me with an expression of sheer terror in his face. For fully two minutes he did not speak. Then he blurted out:

"Who are you?"

"I am the owner of The Tower Magazine. I read a story you sent us lately, and I may say without flattery that it is a remarkably fine piece of work. But I'm not going to print it. It is"

"I know," he said. "I know very well what it is. But how on earth did you know I wrote it?"

"Well," I said, "if you quote bits of it in your sermons"

"Did I do that?"

"You did. Oh, don't look frightened. You didn't quote any of the bits I was afraid to print. You quoted, apparently in all good faith, the wretched moral platitudes which the story satirized."

"Good Heavens!" he said. "I can't have done that."