Page:Our Little Girl (1923).pdf/50

 she composed on a typewriter or with a pen. She was surprised, as I thought she would be. Finally she said she dictated her novels. ‘But,’ she said, ‘my dear boy, that has nothing to do with art—or I should say love. Love and art are one with me. That is the keynote of my character. Why do you think that hundreds of thousands of my books have been sold in every part of the civilized world?’ Of course, I couldn’t tell her why, because that wouldn’t have been especially discreet, but she——”

Here a loud cough was heard from the next room.

“That’s father,” explained Dorothy.

“I thought as much,” said Tommy. “Your mother wouldn’t be likely to cough like a baritone, and—well, anyhow, we were at the point where she was telling me about the sale of her books, and-"

Again the cough.

Dorothy fidgeted. It wasn’t necessary for her father to behave that way. Was she still a child? Tommy continued.

“then she looked at me very seriously and said, ‘You must believe me when I tell you——”

A door creaked. There was a shuffling sound in the corridor, and a faint voice called “Dorothy.”

“Excuse me.”

Dorothy hurried into the corridor.

Tommy looked about, inspecting the volumes in a bookcase which seemed to be locked permanently. He saw Stoddard’s lectures, a faded cyclopedia of household facts, an incomplete set of Dickens, “Three Men in a Boat,” the poems of Owen Meredith, “Battles of the War of the Rebellion,” the poems of Adelaide Anne Procter-"

Then he heard a whispered colloquy which gradually