“For, then, you see,” she said to her husband, as they went home, “I shall be able to take it back to her this very evening and ask her for the half-crown she offered me for doing it, which I should not have had the face to do with eleven more of them still in my possession. I have no doubt of her being satisfied with my work; and in a week I shall have finished the half of them, and we shall be getting on swimmingly.”
Throughout the winter Hector wrote steadily every night, and every night Annie sat by his side and embroidered—though her embroidery was not all for other people. Many a time in after years did their thoughts go back to that period as the type of the happy life they were having together.
The next time Hector went to see Mr. Gillespie, that gentleman suggested that he should give a course of lectures to ladies upon English Poetry, beginning with the Anglo-Saxon poets, of whom Gillespie said he knew nothing, but would be glad to learn a great deal. He knew also, he said, some ladies in the neighborhood willing to pay a guinea each for a course of, say, half-a-dozen such lectures. They would not cost Hector much time to prepare, and would at once bring in a little money. Coleridge himself, he suggested, had done that kind of thing.
“Yes,” said Hector, “but he was Coleridge. I have nothing to say worth saying.”
“Leave your hearers to judge of that,” returned Gillespie. “Do your best, and take your chance. I promise you two pupils at least not overcritical—my wife and myself. It is amazing how little those even who imagine they love it know about English poetry.”
“But where should I find a room?” Hector still objected.