Dunkle had accordingly made an appointment by telephone for the same afternoon.
It was in no very happy frame of mind, I can assure you, that he travelled eastwards. Always throughout the execrable labours of the past three months he had been to some extent sustained by the faint hope that the Archdeacon's story might, after all, not find a market. This hope had never quite died within him until to-day. Now it was dead. If the very first firm of publishers who had seen "Trixie" had bitten, it was quite evident that the book was sellable. When he had told the Archdeacon that it was likely to please the publishers he had been dismally right. And here he was, within ten days of completing the typescript, on his way to negotiate terms with Capper's.
"Perhaps," he said between his teeth, "if I ask the earth it'll put them off; but
