Potterism

can't help seeing all round a thing. I'm told it's a weakness, and that I should get on better if I saw everything in black and white, as so many people do, but it's no use my trying to alter, at my time of life. One has to write in one's own way or not at all.'

'Anyhow,' said Clare, 'it's going to be a ripping book, _Socialist Cecily_; quite one of your best, mother.'

Clare had always been her mother's great stand-by in the matter of literature. She was also useful as a touchstone, as what her mother did not call a foolometer. If a book went with Clare, it went with Leila Yorke's public beyond. Mr. Potter was a less satisfactory reader; he regarded his wife's books as goods for sale, and his comments were, 'That should go all right. That's done it,' which attitude, though commercially helpful, was less really satisfying to the creator than Clare's uncritical absorption in the characters and the story. Clare was, in fact, the public, while Mr. Potter was more the salesman.

And the twins were neither,