Olive's First Story

HE boy who delivered The Evening Banner to those citizens of Denbyville sufficiently enlightened to subscribe for it was supposed, in the course of his duty, to reach David Stewart's house about four o'clock in the afternoon. Very often he was behind time, as Olive Stewart realized to-night in bitterness of spirit. After a slight, unavoidable delay, she had rushed home from school, arriving breathless at five minutes past four, only to languish for an impotent hour at the front gate, awaiting his tardy appearance. If, when he finally came, he would look conscious of his delay, or express fitting remorse, she could forgive him more easily. But she knew he would merely toss the newspaper to her without stopping, as he had done several times before, and go on his way with an air of brisk efficiency, maddening in the circumstances.

For Olive knew, too, that it was not because his route or his list of patrons was lengthened that Johnny Carroll was late. It was because he had stopped to listen to a hand-organ, or watch the work on a new building, or chat with some friend, or even take part in an exciting game several of his chums happened to be playing on the sidewalk as he approached their homes. She had often seen him indulge in these diversions during the months before her personal interest in The Banner had waxed so strong; and from the broad tolerance of her fifteen years she had judged him leniently, reminding herself that he was young and a boy. To-night his tardiness seemed almost a criminal offense. She had serious thoughts of writing about it to the editor of The Banner—thoughts checked just in time by an illuminating memory. No, she could never write that letter. She had no wish to wreck Johnny's future, she merely wanted him to see the error of his ways; and there was a reason now why the slightest word from her might influence the editor to the boy's utter undoing—even to the loss of his job.

She took the reason out of her pocket and read it again, for the sixth time that day. It was a note dated three weeks back, on paper so frequently read and re-read, so lovingly handled, so constantly carried in pockets, school-bags, and the leaves of books, that it was almost worn out. Her eyes, however, gloated over each familiar word with the zest of one seeing it for the first time.

Office of The Evening Banner. ,—We accept with pleasure your story entitled "Caleb Green's Awakening," and we thank you for sending it to us. A check in payment will reach you in due time. Sincerely yours,, Editor.

H. E. Blair, Editor! Olive repeated the words softly to herself, rolling them as precious titbits under her tongue. She did not know Mr. Blair, but she knew of him—a great man, editor of a great newspaper, yet, among all the exacting duties of his crowded life, finding time to sweep the literary sky with piercing eyes, and recognize a new star when he saw one. She pictured to herself his thought of her—for of course he was thinking much about this new writer he had discovered, speculating as to her environment and what she looked like. He had no idea that she was so young—his "Dear Madam" showed that. The maturity of her style had deceived him, and he probably saw her as a gray-haired woman, with the strong, sad face of one who has Lived and Conquered Life, gazing at this moment into the gloaming, with her brow resting on her hand. Olive reflected comfortably that this was exactly the way she intended to look in a few years more. In the mean time, though she did not realize it, there was both strain and sadness in the gaze she fixed on the gloaming now; for it was five o'clock, the friendly yellow eye of a newly lit street lamp half-way down the block was winking at her through the early dusk, a penetrating autumn wind was making her teeth chatter, and still Johnny Carroll did not come.

He was later to-night than he had ever been before, but she dared not leave her post until he came. She had to remain there, really watching the corner he must turn to come into sight, but ostensibly gazing at the distant gray skyline, as if lost in its somber charm. If she went away, even for a moment, she knew what would happen. Johnny Carroll would rush through the gate, throw The Banner against the front door, ring the bell, and rush off again; a maid would take in the newspaper and hand it to some member of the family, and the Greatest Secret in the World would be prematurely revealed, while the Most Beautiful Plan in the World perished before it was born.

No, decidedly, she would take no chances; but there was no reason why she should not walk toward the corner, meeting Johnny and getting The Banner from him in a casual, offhand way. This would enable her also to mention to him, in the measured terms of which she had read in fiction, what she thought of a boy who neglected the obligations of a high office, as he was neglecting his. It had not been easy to hang over that gate and walk that sidewalk every evening for three weeks without arousing the suspicion of even a singularly confiding family such as hers. She had given, it was true, the explanation that for the past year, since she began to "write," had covered satisfactorily every mood and act of hers—she was "thinking about a story," and she wanted to be alone. But she had never before wanted to be suspended over the gate in front of her home every evening for three weeks; and while no one had yet connected this phenomenon with the appearance of Johnny Carroll and The Evening Banner, it was becoming increasingly probable that some one would.

Suddenly a shrill whistle rent the atmosphere, a brisk step rang on the sidewalk, and the welcome figure of Johnny came into view, moving at a speed which suggested that to reach this identical spot at this particular moment had been to him the supreme object of a strenuous day. Sheltered by the gate-post and the twilight, Olive watched him approach, shaken by alternate hope and fear. She could hardly breathe in the uprush of emotion she experienced as he came near, but her secret was teaching her self-control, and when he reached the gate she was gazing pensively away from him, lost in a reverie he hardly dared disturb. It was not, indeed, until he actually stepped before her that she recognized and absently acknowledged his presence.

"Oh, is that The Banner?" she asked, distantly. And then, "I'll take it in," she said; and, grasping the sheet in a hand that trembled, she strolled carelessly along the gravel walk toward the house, swinging the newspaper at her side, with an air of supreme indifference. On previous evenings she had borne it up-stairs to her own room, and there alone, with none to mark her disappointment if her story was not in it, nor her incredulous delight if it was, she had opened the sheets and turned to the fiction page which The Banner had made a popular daily feature. But to-night some instinct, perhaps some electric thrill communicated to her by the paper which held the child of her brain, made her veer off to the right and stop suddenly behind the wing of the house, where, sheltered from observation, she turned the pages rapidly and with increasing nervousness, until she came to the one she sought. Every night for three weeks she had looked for her story in vain. But to-night—

It was wonderful, it was impossible, it could not really have happened at all, but it was there—the first literary babe of hers that had ever been dressed in print, smiling at its palpitating mother from the first column, with her name under its name, that all the world might see whose child it was. With suspended breath she read the title:

The type was strangely beautiful, she thought, and the story was longer than any other on the page. It filled two columns. It was wonderful to her to realize all that had happened to it since she had sent it forth. It had been read and accepted. It had been put into type—actually set by printers' hands. It had been proved up and read by proof-readers—who knows with what keen intellectual delight. And now, now, even at this moment, it was undoubtedly being read by half the town. Yes, in the houses all around her, back of those dim windows and non-committal walls, absorbed men and women were reading "Caleb Green's Affinity," by Olive Stewart, and telling one another what they thought of it!

Instinctively her eyes read down the columns, catching a familiar phrase here and there, but she checked herself in this selfish indulgence. The hour had come to reveal the Wonderful Secret, according to the Beautiful Plan, and she would not forego now, on a sudden impulse, the delight of which she had dreamed so long. But she did not go into the house at once. As her hand dropped to her side, still holding open the precious page, she stood still for a moment, staring dreamily before her. In her line of vision were trees and buildings and distant moving figures, but she saw none of them. Instead, a bewildering castle shaped itself before her happy eyes—a castle of indescribable beauty, made of the stuff of which dreams are made, yet resting on the secure foundation of labor and achievement.

The voice of her little sister, eight years old, who had been sent in search of her, rose to her ears twice before she heard it, though Josie's diction was singularly clear for one of her tender age, and she had an incurable habit of emphasizing her important words.

"Mamma said she thinks you should come in," she said now, briskly. "She's afraid you'll catch cold in this damp lake air."

She caught Olive's hand and stood swinging it back and forth, unmindful of her silence, used to the abstracted moods of this superior being who was the central figure in her little world. Olive bent and kissed the upturned face tenderly, almost solemnly, thinking as she did so, and thrilling with the thought, "Josie doesn't know it, but she's kissing an Author."

In blithe unconsciousness of this high privilege, Josie prattled on, relieving herself promptly, according to her custom, of everything with which her memory was charged at that moment.

"An' mamma says she doesn't know what's come over you lately, 'cause you're so unlike yourself. She's 'fraid you're going to be sick. Please come in, Ollie," she wheedled.

Olive yielded to the pull of the little hand.

"Is father home?" she asked, as they entered the hall, and she knelt to help Josie with the stiff buttons of her coat.

"Yes, an' they're all in the living-room—father and mother and Aunt Virginia an' grandma."

Olive's heart leaped as she hung Josie's coat on the rack and put her own coat and hat beside it, but in the next instant a mild panic seized her. This was her hour, and there was no excuse for delay. Her stage was set, her audience waiting. Everything, so far, was working out almost miraculously in accordance with the Beautiful Plan—yet suddenly she was afraid. What if the family didn't like the story? What if they disapproved of her printing it without having told them about it? What if it was bad, after all, and reflected discredit on them, her own people, and in a way responsible for her actions? Then, in one of her quick revulsions of feeling, she pressed Josie to her side and laughed. Whatever criticism life held for her, she knew she had little to fear from the adoring circle beyond that closed door. And if her first literary production was something she had to "live down," though she didn't put it to herself in just that way, she knew subconsciously that her family would never believe it other than a work of genius misunderstood by the public, as works of genius are apt to be. With her arms around her sister, and clutching her copy of The Banner so tightly that her hand afterward bore the imprint of its fresh ink, she opened the door and entered the living-room, propelling Josie gently before her. They were all there, as the little girl had said—three of them around the table, on which the great reading-lamp had already been lit—her father, deep in a magazine; her mother, intent on a bit of embroidery; her grandmother, at work on another pair of the brilliant red stockings with which Josie's plump legs were even then brightening the dying day. Those innumerable pairs of red stockings, knitted in close succession by the devoted old lady, were the cross of Josie's life. They were "beautiful stockings," she had been assured, very long, made of merino wool, and "not to be bought in the shops for less than two dollars a pair." Josie was perfectly certain that, left to herself, she would never buy them in any shop at any price, and said so with characteristic decision.

Those stockings might be beautiful, as her family claimed, but many and heartless were the jests of her friends at their expense; and Mr. Morgan, her next-door neighbor, had confided to Josie only last week that it was solely by their aid, through seeing her standing at the gate, that he was able to find his way home one foggy night. With a despairing look now at the unfinished stocking in her grandmother's hands, Josie faltered on the threshold, preferring outer darkness to a nearer association with it, but Olive drew her along, finding a curious comfort in the reflection that here at least was one auditor who would not be critical. Everybody looked up as they entered, and a certain expectant expression, characteristic of Mrs. Stewart when her older daughter was not with her, dropped now from her features like a discarded veil. She regarded her ewe lamb with an expression in her eyes which Olive would never see in any other eyes in the world, however many she looked into.

"Aren't you cold, dear?" she asked. "Come to the fire."

Olive dropped a kiss on her head as she passed, touched her father's shoulder with a tender hand, and sank into her favorite place on the hearth-rug before the huge open fireplace, in which several logs were blazing. She was still holding The Evening Banner with a desperate grip. Josie sat down beside her, turning her fat back coldly upon the red stocking, and feeling in her little pocket for the jackstones with which at this period she was whiling away her leisure hours.

No one else spoke, though Aunt Virginia, who was at the piano trying some new music, nodded to her niece over her shoulder without stopping. It was all a familiar scene, in a familiar setting, yet to Olive it seemed different. There was a tenseness in the atmosphere, or perhaps it was merely the tenseness of her own nerves. Would they like her story? Would they?

Holding the newspaper before her excited face, she gazed at the page and wondered if those around her heard the beating of her heart. She had to seem absorbed in The Banner for five or ten minutes—that was part of the Plan. Then she must speak, but very casually, for the slightest evidence of self-consciousness would spoil the effect she had hoped to produce.

After what seemed to her the right interval, she dropped the paper and spoke, and no one but Josie, playing with her jackstones on the hearth-rug beside her, noticed the strained pitch of her voice.

"I've just been reading a story in The Banner," she said, rather breathlessly. "May I read it aloud, mother? I want to know if you think the author has made it end right."

"Why, yes, of course, dear," her mother said, promptly. "That will be very nice.

She glanced at the old clock, ticking solemnly in its dim recess.

"Supper will not be ready for half an hour," she added, reassuringly.

For Olive to read a story aloud to the family was not an unusual circumstance. She was watching the work of "real authors" with what she called an "eagle eye," and hardly a week passed without some demand from her for family judgment on this situation or that in magazine fiction. The Banner writers interested her only as amateurs in her own town, real flesh-and-blood women, whom she knew or at least had seen remotely on the streets. One of them had gone to New York to win wealth and fame, and those left behind pronounced her name with bated breath, and told one another anecdotes of her youth. It was understood in the Stewart home that some day, years hence, the name of Olive Stewart might adorn a Banner page, but it had not occurred to any one but Olive that she would make her début there at the ingenuous age of fifteen.

To-night, at her suggestion, every one but her mother looked resigned but unenthusiastic. Her grandmother raised her eyes from her knitting to smile at her with gentle acquiescence. She would have smiled as gently and receptively if Olive had suggested a ghost-dance by the entire family, for the elder Mrs. Stewart took life calmly. Aunt Virginia turned from her piano with an audible sigh. Mr. Stewart, held fast by an article on the mysteries of high finance, had hardly heard his daughter's words. Olive fixed him with a compelling eye. If—rare but possible occurrence—he happened to be more interested for the moment in his reading than in her, some of the colors of her iridescent dream would fade to neutral tints.

"Please listen, too, father," she pleaded; adding, with delicate tact: "You know, mother says you're the best critic in the family."

Her father raised his eyebrows and smiled at her with quizzical understanding. Then, laying his magazine on the table, face downward to mark his place, he leaned back in his big chair, and crossed his hands behind his head in his favorite attitude.

"Go ahead," he said, elegantly, and nodded to Josie, who had dropped her jackstones and was standing expectantly at his knee. She promptly climbed on his lap and cuddled up to him, laying her cheek against his breast with a sigh of entire happiness. Not even the sight of the red stocking filling her immediate foreground could dim Josie's perfect content when she was with her father. Olive began her story in a voice suddenly clear and steady. Fear had left her as inexplicably as it had come, and she felt calm and self-possessed.

"‘Caleb Green's Awakening,’" she read, and stopped. Would they comment on the title? They would, and did.

"Sounds rather slushy," remarked her father, easily. "Are you sure the story's worth reading?"

Olive dropped the paper and stared at him in consternation. She had thought it a beautiful and strangely arresting title. She was sure that if she had seen it anywhere she would have read the story under it. Startled words pressed against her lips, but she held them in.

"The editor of The Banner printed it," she observed, coldly, after an instant of pregnant silence. "So he thought it was worth reading."

Her father looked snubbed.

"Oh, all right; go on," he said, and in the silence that followed Olive seemed to hear his unspoken words, "Get it over."

She read her story well—so well that the unconscious warmth and tenderness of her voice should have caught and held the attention of her hearers more than the tale itself. But each person in the little group was subconsciously following a different train of thought. Mr. Stewart's mind had returned to the mysteries of high finance, and had then moved on to some detail of his own business. The name "Caleb" had reminded grandma of some one she knew years ago. Aunt Virginia, still on the piano-stool and facing her beloved keyboard, was quietly sorting some sheet music, and Mrs. Stewart had begun to wonder whether the new cook would be equal to making the waffles ordered for the evening meal. Nevertheless, they listened—but not as those hanging breathless on a narrative.

Olive's hero was a guileless young countryman who, having met a lady on a railroad train, imagined for one blissful day that he had found in her the realization of his dream, only to wake from that dream when the day was done. The little tale was not as bad as it might have been. Reading it herself, long afterward, it seemed to Olive rather surprisingly good for a first effort. But her family were not judging it from that standpoint. What they heard of it they assumed to be the work of what Olive called "a real author," and they demanded high literary entertainment in return for even their divided attention.

Glancing up from the page at the end of paragraphs that seemed to her impressive, Olive studied their faces and waited for their tributes; but they listened, when they listened at all, in unresponsive silence. The face of her father and that of Aunt Virginia never changed. Once her mother smiled, but absently, Olive realized, rather as if at some reflection of her own, suggested by the story. There was an equal doubt in her mind as to whether her grandmother's frequent nods meant acquiescence in the points of the tale or merely increasing drowsiness. The heart that had leaped so lightly in Olive's bosom a short hour ago seemed to be dropping down, down, down. Her voice flattened as she read, but she kept on steadily to the bitter end of her self-appointed task. When she had finished there was a moment of silence, broken only by the sudden fall of a blazing log on the fender and the creak of her father's great chair as he changed his position. Each member of the family was trying to recall enough of the story to make an intelligent comment, but for Olive that pause was filled with black despair.

It was her grandmother who spoke first, and Olive realized, with a rush of affectionate feeling, that she had misjudged the dear, nodding head.

"I suppose something of that kind could have happened," the old lady said, guardedly.

"Humph!"

This was David Stewart's characteristic note of impatience, and the aspiring author turned cold as she heard it. It was plain that whether the thing could happen or not was a matter of entire indifference to her father.

"I knew a young man named Caleb when I was a girl," continued grandma, peacefully. "The first night I met him we were at a church sociable, and I wore a new gray poplin dress. Before I had been there an hour the young man upset a plate of strawberry ice-cream down the whole front breadth, and it looked so bad I had to go home. It ruined the dress, for I was never able to get those spots out."

She sighed, turning the heel of the red stocking. Olive waited in anguish. Would they ignore the story altogether, after this diversion, or would they return to it if gently conducted?

"What did you think of the plot?" she asked, timidly.

"I don't see why people write such silly things nowadays," said her aunt. "There's enough going on around us all the time to make really interesting reading, if authors only knew it."

"I think it's a nice story," observed Josie, suddenly opening the eyes that had been closed in peaceful slumber for ten minutes, "’specially that about the dog." As the dog was solely a figment of Josie's dream, everybody laughed, even the outraged author taking a wan share in the little ripple, though her heart seemed bursting with its woe.

"What is it in the story that interests you, Olive?" her mother asked, gently. "You spoke about the end. It seemed to me that was logical enough."

Olive brightened. This was something—but, oh, how differently the Wonderful Plan was working out from what she had imagined!

"I think it has a new plot," she said, faintly, "and—and an interesting one, you know."

"New?" Aunt Virginia's voice dripped eloquence. "Why, Ollie, what are you thinking of? Noah whiled away the evenings in the Ark with stories founded on that plot, and we've been having them ever since."

"Oh, I don't think it's so bad."

Mrs. Stewart's voice, soothing and comfortable, checked the hot words on Olive's lips.

"But what's the use of it? Why was it written?" Mr. Stewart yawned and stretched out his hand for his magazine. "Old or new," he added, "the thing's a trifle, hardly worth attention. I can't imagine what you saw in it, Ollie."

But Olive had borne all that she could bear. The Wonderful Plan, as originally conceived in her mind, had shown the members of her family grouped around her, wide-eyed, intent, even thrilled, while she read to them, and clamorous at the end for the author's name. Instead, she had met not even the friendly criticism she could have endured more easily, but that most harrowing attitude of all—airy, utter indifference. As the contrast between what was to be and what really was suddenly overcame her, her wonderful castle tottered and fell, while her vision of herself as "a real author," so clear, so near to her happy eyes an hour ago, became again merely a dim, remote figure at the far end of a long avenue of years.

Now she was only a little girl, trying to swallow a great lump in her throat at the same time that she gulped down the biggest disappointment of her fifteen years of life. "I thought," she began, and stopped a moment, then ended her sentence with a rush—"I thought perhaps you'd like it—because—because—I—wrote—it!"

At the words every one in the room except Josie started, then straightened as if under the sudden force of an electric shock. Her father's hand, containing the magazine which he had just picked up, remained for an instant motionless over the table; then the magazine dropped from his relaxed fingers.

"Eh? What?" he cried, and stared at her with incredulous eyes. "What's that?"

But Olive did not hear him. Her mother's arms had opened and into their safe shelter she fled, burying her burning face in the breast that had always been her refuge.

"It's my very f-first s-story," she sobbed. "The very first I ever had p-printed, and you didn't l-l-like it!"

The last words came out with a childish gulp that carried a great stab of sympathetic pain to the maternal heart beating under Olive's curly head. "You said it was s-s-s-illy," added the author, turning the knife in her wound with relentless hands.

"Oh, my precious baby!" Her mother's eyes were wet, too; her arms tightened their grasp. "My own little girl! You know that if we had realized it was your story we would have loved every beautiful word in it."

"Y-yes—but that's j-just the p-p-point." The stricken author raised her head and gazed at her cowering audience with streaming, reproachful eyes.

"I wanted you to like it for it-itself alone as a s-story, and not just be-cause it was m-mine."

"Ollie dear!" Aunt Virginia's voice was shaken by remorse. "I'm so sorry I spoke as I did. I said the plot wasn't new, but every one admits that there's no such thing as a new plot nowadays, anyway. And—to tell the truth—I only got a vague idea of the story. I was thinking of something else."

"So was I."

Mr. Stewart's voice was briskly matter-of-fact. At the bottom of his big, devoted father's heart he felt worse than any of the others over Olive's grief and chagrin, for, better than any one else there, he understood how real her suffering was. Olive's temperament was like his own. He knew the height of the mountain-peak on which she had dreamed her dream of this hour, and the depths of the abyss in which she was now plunged. This was a crisis in her life, and the worst of it all was, he realized, that whatever the future brought she would never quite lose the memory of it, nor the scar of the experience. In that moment he would have given half his comfortable fortune if by doing so he could wipe forever from her mind and his own the memory of the past half-hour. He got up, went over to his wife's chair, and laid a very tender hand on his daughter's head, which remained unresponsive even to that loved touch.

"You see, my dear," he said, "you put a pretty stiff proposition up to us, and—well, we weren't equal to it, that's all. You expected us to drop everything we were thinking of, and concentrate on a stranger's story as carefully as if we knew it was yours. We didn't. I thought of what I'd been reading, and after that I composed an important letter I've got to write to-morrow. I shaped the actual phrases I intend to use. And Virginia here, who doesn't know anything about literature, anyway"—this with brotherly candor—"was thinking of the gentleman who's going to be your uncle, and I can prove it."

"I was, but I'd like to know how you knew it," remarked his sister, welcoming the little diversion.

"It's always a safe bet, at any time," her brother told her. "But to-night I know he's coming. While Olive was reading, you arranged the music you're going to play for him in a nice little pile. Isn't that it—the heap on the left?"

Miss Stewart laughed and admitted that it was. Olive wiped her eyes. "And now," said her father, briskly, "we want to hear that story all over again"; and he put his hand under her arm to help her to her feet.

But Olive, still kneeling beside her mother and dimly comforted by his words, shrank back into the shelter her arms afforded; and in that unconscious movement, the first she had ever made away from him, David Stewart received a blow that made him set his teeth.

"Oh, I couldn't read it again—I really couldn't," she stammered.

"Then I will," declared her father.

He crossed to the hearth-rug, picked up the discarded Banner, and, still standing there, read the story aloud, a little unsteadily at first and with a momentary tendency to clear his throat, then as tenderly and as understandingly as the author herself had read it. And as he did so some dim realization of Olive's dream came to her at last. For here—oh, here indeed, now that they knew—were the wide-eyed interest, the strained attention, the delight, and the appreciation which she had seen in her vision of this hour.

"It's beautiful, dearest," said her mother, when the story was finished, her sweet voice trembling. "It's just beautiful. David, let me see how it looks."

They all wanted to see how it looked. Mr. Stewart returned to the table and spread the page out on its generous surface, while the family gathered round it, every member talking at once, about the type and the heading, the style of the story, the plot and its development. They wanted to know when Olive had written it, and how long the editor had had it, and what he had said. Their questions came faster than she could answer them. Their eyes were shining, their voices eager and excited. Olive's tears had ceased, but she took only a languid part in the talk that flowed around her, replying to their questions as briefly as she could. Her wounds still rankled, though loving hands had drawn out the barbs so unconsciously planted.

"How did you feel when you opened the paper and really saw yourself in print for the first time?" asked her aunt, curiously, while the others were still staring at the printed page with fascinated eyes. For a moment Olive did not reply. In a flash of memory she was seeing again the dream castle she had looked upon as she stood alone an hour ago. Had it been only an hour ago? She felt as if she had lived a long, long time since then. At last, realizing that they were all waiting for her reply—

"Funny," she observed, tersely, and said no more, but crossed the room listlessly and stood with her back to them, staring out at the night. Her father and mother exchanged a quick glance. Then, with an air of quick decision, her father followed her, caught her by the shoulders, and turned her round till she faced him.

"Now, see here, Olive, this won't do," he said, with quiet emphasis, looking at her with eyes that were strangely soft without their customary twinkle. "If it was true that we didn't like your story, and you needed the knock-down blow of this experience, I'd let you take it—for in the end it would do you good. But it isn't true, and you don't deserve it." He stopped for a moment, his heart contracting under the expression in her brown eyes. "You find me a pretty truthful parent on the whole, don't you?" he added, when he could speak naturally.

Olive looked up at him as a patient ready for an operation might look at the surgeon she trusts.

"I don't believe you would tell a lie for anything in the world," she told him, with conviction.

"We-ell, that's saying a good deal." For an instant Mr. Stewart looked mildly embarrassed. "I don't know that I'd go that far," he added. "But take this from me as a fact. You're just a little beginner; you know that. But I think your story is a remarkable story for a girl of fifteen to write. I don't believe anyone of fifteen, anywhere, could write a better one. And I'm just as proud of you as I can be."

The last sentence came out with a gasp, for before he had finished speaking she had hurled herself into his arms.

"Oh, father, that's what I wanted," she cried, "to have you say that—and I wanted it so dreadfully! I know you wouldn't say it if you didn't mean it—but you do—I know you do—and I never was so happy in my life!"

He kissed her, holding her close.

"You'll print a lot of stories in your time, my girl," he said, "but I guess we'll never get quite the thrill out of any of them that we've got from this one."