For Charteris was important. Patricia was rereading all the books that Charteris had published, and they engrossed her with an augmenting admiration.
 
But it is unnecessary to dilate upon the marvelous and winning pictures of life in Lichfield before the War between the States which Charteris has painted in his novels. "Even as the king of birds that with unwearied wing soars nearest to the sun, yet wears upon his breast the softest down,"—as we learn from no less eminent authority than that of the Lichfield Courier-Herald—"so Mr. Charteris is equally expert in depicting the derring-do and tenderness of those glorious days of chivalry, of fair women and brave men, of gentle breeding, of splendid culture and wholesome living."
 
Patricia was not a little puzzled by these books. The traditional Lichfield, she decided in the outcome, may very possibly have been just the trick-work of a charlatan's cleverness; but, even in that event, here were the tales of life in Lichfield—ardent, sumptuous and fragrant throughout with the fragrance of love and roses, of rhyme and of youth's lovely fallacies; and for the pot-pourri, if it deserved no higher name, all who believed that living ought to be a uniformly noble transaction could not fail to be grateful eternally.
 
Esthetic values apart—and, indeed, to all such values Patricia accorded a provisional respect—what most impressed her Stapyltonian mind was the fact that these books represented, in a perfectly tangible way, success. Patricia very heartily admired success when it was brevetted as such by the applause of others. And while to be a noted stylist, and even to be reasonably sure of annotated reissuement for the plaguing of unborn schoolchildren, was all well enough, in an unimportant, high-minded way, Patricia was far more vividly impressed by the blunt figures which told how many of John Charteris's books had been bought and paid for. She accepted these figures as his publishers gave them forth, implicitly; and she marveled over and took odd joy in these figures. They enabled her to admire Charteris's books without reservation.
 
By this time Mrs. Ashmeade had managed, in the most natural manner, to tell Patricia a deal concern............