Patience for Christmas by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2018-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

If one thing held Patience Friendly back as an author, it was self-doubt. She quibbled over words, commas, responses, and revisions. Some of that dithering was the writer’s delight in every detail of her craft, but much of it was what happened when nobody appreciated a natural talent, obvious though that talent might be.

“Have I ever thanked you for how much you encourage Harry and the other lads?” Dougal asked as Detwiler bundled into a coat.

“I’m the editor,” Detwiler said. “My job is to correct, improve, and admire. The boys are loyal to MacHugh’s, and they are a bright lot.”

Unlike the publisher. The words hung in the air as Detwiler went about putting the quill pens in order.

“Be off with you, Aloysius. The cab is waiting at the door.” Dougal slid into the seat behind Detwiler’s desk, opened a drawer, and withdrew the professor’s final two columns.

At the top of the first page, the overspending housewife—a newlywed in this version of the letter—silently reproached him.

“You tell that poor woman to throw herself on her husband’s mercy,” Detwiler said, tossing a scarf around his neck. “But when it comes to confessing your own transgressions, you’re not half so forthcoming, professor.”

“You have the correcting part off by heart, old man. The cab driver’s horse is standing out in this weather while you sermonize at me.”

“I do admire you, Dougal, and I fancy Miss Friendly does too. Start there—with all that mutual admiration—and the transgressing takes on a different perspective. If a housewife can admit she’s bought a few too many holiday tokens for her loved ones, can’t you admit that your ambitions for a talented author got away from you?”

Dougal’s ambitions for Patience hadn’t merely got away from him. They’d gone completely to Bedlam.

“That’s the problem,” Dougal said, staring at the words marching across the page. Schoolteacher words, very articulate, but lacking the warmth Patience brought to her advice. “Patience will think all I admire is her writing ability. She’ll think I’ve engaged her affections merely to use her talent for my own ends.”

Detwiler jammed a newsboy’s cap on his head. “You are thinking too hard, being too much the academic fellow and not enough the callow swain. There’s a flask in the bottom drawer. May it bring you the comfort and joy my common sense cannot.”

A gust of cold air wafted in as Detwiler shuffled through the door.

Somewhere in Detwiler’s haranguing, Dougal sensed a kernel of wisdom.

A schoolteacher learned the value of judiciously praising ability and honest effort. He also saw the nearly irreparable harm done when both were ignored for too long. How was a woman to have confidence in her abilities when for her entire upbringing she was trained not to bring notice to herself?

Dougal hurt for Patience and promised himself he’d remedy the harm done to her self-confidence, assuming she spoke to him, wrote for his publications, and gave him the time of day once she learned that the entire Christmas project had been based on a lie.

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