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The heroine of his best-known book was modelled, so people said, on the wife of a Cabinet Minister, and thousands of suburban Englishwomen professed to have an intimate knowledge of the statesman's family life solely because they had read Lensley's novel. It was a flippant, vulgar book, the outcome of a flippant, vulgar mind. Boltt had a wider public than Lensley.
"Really," he said, "Lady Cecily isn't in the least interested in my effusions." "Oh, but I am, Mr. Boltt," Lady Cecily interrupted. "What did the paper say? I'm sure it was very flattering!..." "The reviewer said that the book would probably please the vicar's only daughter, but that it wouldn't impose upon her when she grew up...." "Oh!" said Lady Cecily. "Some rival, I'm afraid!" Mr.
Henry wondered what Boltt would say if he knew that the review had been written by him, and an imp in him made him interrupt the long recital of the glories of France. "The Morning Report had a good go at your last novel, Boltt!" he said. The novelist looked reproachfully at Henry, as if he were rebuking him for indelicacy. "I never see the Morning Report," he replied loftily.
"Was he the chap who sells the stuff you make the mittens out of?..." "Oh, no, Jimphy, he was a photographer. We're all to have our photographs in the Daily Reflexion...." "Except Mr. Boltt?" Henry asked maliciously. "No, Mr. Boltt's to be in it too. Holding wool. I've been photographed in three different positions ... beginning to knit a mitten, half-way through a mitten, and finishing a mitten.
Jimphy and everybody! Except Mr. Boltt, of course. He's unfit or something. Aren't you, Mr. Boltt?" "Ah, if I were only a young man again, Lady Cecily!..." "But he's writing to the papers, and that's something, isn't it?" Cecily interrupted. "And I'm making mittens for the soldiers. We're all making mittens. Except Mr. Boltt, of course." "Who was the johnny who's just gone out?" Jimphy demanded.
"Very well," said Lady Cecily, rising too. The others followed her example, and Boltt and Lensley prepared to escort Lady Cecily to the door, but she gave her hand to them and said "Good-night!" "It's so nice to have seen you both," she said. "No, don't trouble. Mr. Quinn will come with me!"
They completely ignored Henry after they had been introduced to him. "Mr. Quinn is writing a novel, too!" said Lady Cecily. "Oh, yes!" said Lensley. "Indeed!" Boltt burbled. Thereafter they addressed themselves exclusively to Lady Cecily and her husband. Lensley told Lady Cecily that she was to be the heroine of his next book. "I'm studying you now, dear Lady Cecily!" he said.
Two tame novelists turned up ... Boltt and Lensley!" "Those asses!" "Yes. Lensley 'chattered' to Lady Cecily, and Boltt bored and bored and bored.... I took him down a bit. I rubbed in the Morning Report review. The little toad could hardly sit still! Of course, he affected the superior person attitude!" "God be merciful to him, poor little rat!
Boltt had been a surveyor at one period of his life, and his favourite theme of conversation was Renascence architecture.
Boltt, a tall, thin, stooping man, with peering eyes, had discovered "the human note" of which Gilbert's editor prated continually. He was a precise, priggish man, extraordinarily vain though no vainer than Lensley, who, however, had an easy manner that Boltt would never acquire.
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