The Argosy — page 54: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

My Saturdays. AI and he crouched down behind it as it stood open, perfectly concealed from the two within. My position was not pleasant. I had been too utterly taken by surprise to stop him in time, and now I could not move without letting him know that he was discovered, and dis- covering him to Archibald and Rhoda. A nice trap we were all caught in! Those two blissfully ignorant that the Professor was watching them; the Professor never dreaming that I was watching him ; and J, the arch-intriguer, not wishing in the least to watch any- body, and yet standing in my Ear of Dionysius, and watching them all. For, by one of those unaccountable accidents which sometimes happen in building, and which our architects seem quite unable to account for or control, the little recess in which I was imprisoned caught every sound from the drawing-room with singular distinctness ; and although neither voice was high-pitched, I could hear every word. ““T am afraid,” Archie was saying, “that you have thought me slow in doing what I could for your husband’s book ; but my time is not altogether at my own disposal, and other people’s time is not at all, and so the affair has taken what must have seemed to you a long while.” | “Of course I could not help being anxious to hear,” Rhoda re- plied ; “‘ but I have had enough experience of delays with editors and publishers only to wonder that you have been able to do anything so soon. What is it that you have done?” “TI took the chapter on ‘ Antiquities’ to ‘The Archzologist,’ and asked the editor (whom I know very well) to look it over as soon as possible. Unluckily, he was just going away for a week, which caused a delay, or you would have had some news sooner. Well, he says it is extremely valuable, erudite, and well-written.” (The Pro- fessor lifted his head, and I was sure from the expression even of the back of it, that the demoniac look had gone off his face.) ‘He could not make room for it all, because his paper is not a large one; but he has marked the paragraphs he considers most important, and if he can have those put into the form of two short articles he will gladly publish them.” ‘Oh, that zs good,” cried Rhoda ; “it is the lifting of the cloud !” ‘‘'There’s more to come,” said Archie, triumphantly. ‘I took ‘Climate and Soil’ to the ‘English Review’—that’s a big, new quarterly, you know—and he regularly jumped at it. It will only want just a head and a tail to make it a perfect article for him ; it can’t be too solid. The bits of description work in splendidly, and keep it from being heavy. He'll want it by the beginning of August. And ‘ Per- sonal Adventures’ will do for my magazine first-rate, if the Professor doesn’t mind my editing them a little. They are just a little longer than I can manage, and yet I don’t want to lose any of them.” “IT don’t know how to thank you,” Rhoda said, her voice trembling with pleasure. ‘I can hardly believe such good news, because I had CONnNICOOOKS.EO