The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

Ray did not go to deliver any of his letters that afternoon; he decided / now that it would be out of taste to do so on Sunday, as he had already / doubted that it would be, in the morning. He passed the afternoon in his / room, trying from time to time to reduce the turmoil of his reveries to / intelligible terms in verse, and in poetic prose. He did nothing with / them; in the end, though, he was aware of a new ideal, and he resolved / that if he could get his story back from Chapley & Co., he would rewrite / the passages that characterized the heroine, and make it less like the / every-day, simple prettiness of his first love. He had always known that / this did not suit the character he had imagined; he now saw that it / required a more complex and mystical charm. But he did not allow himself / to formulate these volitions and perceptions, any more than his / conviction that he had now a double reason for keeping away from Mr. / Brandreth and from Miss Hughes. He spent the week in an ecstasy of / forbearance. On Saturday afternoon he feigned the necessity of going to / ask Mr. Brandreth how he thought a novel in verse, treating a strictly / American subject in a fantastic way, would succeed. He really wished to / learn something without seeming to wish it, about his manuscript, but / he called so late in the afternoon that he found Mr. Brandreth putting / his desk in order just before starting home. He professed a great / pleasure at sight of Ray, and said he wished he would come part of the / way home with him; he wanted to have a little talk.

As if the word home had roused the latent forces of hospitality in him, / he added, "I want to have you up at my place, some day, as soon as we / can get turned round. Mrs. Brandreth is doing first-rate, now; and that / boy -- well, sir, he's a perfect Titan. I wish you could see him / undressed. He's just like the figure of the infant Hercules strangling / the serpent when he grips the nurse's finger. I know it sounds / ridiculous, but I believe that fellow recognizes me, and distinguishes / between me and his mother. I suppose it's my hat -- I come in with my hat / on, you know, just to try him; and when he catches sight of that hat, / you ought to see his arms go!"

The paternal rhapsodies continued a long time after they were in the / street, and Ray got no chance to bring in either his real or pretended / business. He listened with mechanical smiles and hollow laughter, alert / at the same time for the slightest vantage which Mr. Brandreth should / give him. But the publisher said of his own motion:

"Oh, by-the-way, you'll be interested to know that our readers' reports / on your story are in."

"Are they? " Ray gasped. He could not get out any more.

Mr. Brandreth went on: "I didn't examine the reports very attentively / myself, but I think they were favorable, on the whole. There were / several changes suggested: I don't recall just what. But you can see / them all on Monday. We let Miss Hughes go after lunch on Saturdays, and / she generally takes some work home with her, and I gave them to her to / put in shape for you. I thought it would be rather instructive for you / to see the different opinions in the right form. I believe you can't / have too much method in these things."

"Of course," said Ray, in an anguish of hope and fear. The street seemed / to go round; he hardly knew where he was. He bungled on inarticulately / before he could say: "I believe in method, too. But I'm sorry I couldn't / have had the reports to-day, because I might have had Sunday to think / the suggestions over, and see what I could do with them."

"Well, I'm sorry, too. She hadn't been gone half an hour when you came / in. If I'd thought of your happening in! Well, it isn't very long till / Monday! She'll have them ready by that time. I make it a rule myself to / put all business out of my mind from 2 P. M. on Saturday till Monday 9 / A. M., and I think you'll find it an advantage, too. I won't do business, / and I won't talk business, and I won't think business after two o'clock / on Saturday. I believe in making Sunday a day of rest and family / enjoyment. We have an early dinner; and then I like to have my wife read / or play to me, and now we have in the baby, and that amuses us."

Ray forced himself to say that as a rule he did not believe in working / on Sunday either; he usually wrote letters. He abruptly asked Mr. / Brandreth how he thought it would do for him to go and ask Miss Hughes / for a sight of the readers' reports in the rough.

Mr. Brandreth laughed. "You _are_ anxious! Do you know where she lives?"

"Oh, yes; I stopped there last Sunday with Mr. Kane on our way to the / Park. I saw Mr. Chapley there."

"Oh! " said Mr. Brandreth, with the effect of being arrested by the last / fact in something he might otherwise have said. It seemed to make him / rather unhappy. "Then you saw Miss Hughes's father?"

"Yes; and all his friends," Ray answered, in a way that evidently / encouraged Mr. Brandreth to go on.

"Yes? What did you think of them?"

"I thought they were mostly harmless; but one or two of them ought to / have been in the violent wards."

"Did Mr. Chapley meet them?"

"Oh, no; he went away before any of them came in. As Mr. Kane took me, I / had to stay with him."

Mr. Brandreth got back a good deal of his smiling complacency, which had / left him at Ray's mention of Mr. Chapley in connection with Hughes. "Mr. / Chapley and Mr. Hughes are old friends."

"Yes; I understood something of that kind."

"They date back to the Brook Farm days together."