Henry Handel Richardson

“ But the true seal was set on her regeneration when she was invited to join the boarders’ Literary Society; of which Cupid and Mary were the leading spirits. This carried her back, at one stroke, into the swing of school life. For everybody who was anybody belonged to the society. And, despite her friendship with the head of her class, Laura still knew what it was to get the cold shoulder. ”

“ And with this she had an unqualified success.
“I believe there’s something in you after all,” said Cupid to her that night. “Anyhow, you know now what it is to be true, yet not dull and prosy.”
And Laura manfully choked back her desire to cry out that not a word of her story was fact.
She was long in falling asleep. Naturally, she was elated and excited by her success; but also a new and odd piece of knowledge had niched itself in her brain. It was this. In your speech, your talk with others, you must be exact to the point of pedantry, and never romance or draw the long-bow ”

“ Running a skilled eye over the length of a shelf close at hand, she hit on a slim, blue volume, the title of which at once arrested her attention. For, notwithstanding her fourteen years, and her dabblings in Richardson and Scott, Laura’s liking for a real child’s book was as strong as it had ever been ”

“ About twenty girls formed the Society, which assembled one Saturday evening in an empty music-room. All were not, of course, equally productive: some had brought it no further than a riddle: and it was just these drones who, knowing nothing of the pother composition implied, criticised most stringently the efforts of the rest. ”

“ To hold, the forte pedal down, from beginning to end!”
Laura was unconscious of having sinned in this way. But it might quite well be so. For she had spent a topsy-turvy, though highly engrossing hour. In place of the children’s story she anticipated, she had found herself, on opening the book, confronted by the queerest stuff she had ever seen in print. From the opening sentence on. To begin with, it was a play—and Laura had never had a modern prose play in her hand before —and then it was all about the oddest, yet the most commonplace people. ”

“ Laura being the youngest member, her affair came last on the programme: she had to sit and listen to the others, her cheeks hot, her hands very cold. Presently all were done, and then Cupid, who was chairman, called on “a new author, Rambotham, who it is hoped will prove a valuable acquisition to the Society, to read us his maiden effort”. ”