‘No I don’t think I get letters from people I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Barton, considering. ‘Except begging letters and advertisements.’
‘But you must have had lots of letters about your last book,’ said Mrs. Rivers. ‘Everyone was trying to get it from the library.’
Mr. Johns was on tenterhooks, sensing Mr. Barton’s annoyance at this assumption by Mrs. Rivers that his wife was on her level, and not a little apprehensive at Mrs. Barton’s baffling replies. But Guy broke in.
‘Mother only had three letters about her last book,’ he said, ‘one from Professor Marston, and one from Cardinal Boccafiume, and one from the Duke of Monte Cristo.’
This was a deliberate piece of impertinence on Guy’s part, for even if Mrs. Rivers was not familiar with the name of Professor Marston, who knew so much abo
