p, and then allowed them to act
with what may be called rashness, so that the story did not really
suffer. Before Tommy was nineteen he changed all that. Out went this
because she would not have done it, and that because she could not
have done it. Fathers might now have taken a lesson from T. Sandys in
the upbringing of their daughters. He even sternly struck out the
diminutives. With a pen in his hand and woman in his head, he had such
noble thoughts that his tears of exaltation damped the pages as he
wrote, and the ladies must have been astounded as well as proud to see
what they were turning into.

That was Tommy with a pen in his hand and a handkerchief hard by; but
it was another Tommy who, when the finest bursts were over, sat back
in his chair and mused. The lady was consistent now, and he would
think about her, and think and think, until concentration, which is a
pair of blazing eyes, seemed to draw her out of the pages to his side,
and then he and she sported in a way forbidden in the tale. While he
sat there with eyes riveted, he had her to dinner at a restaurant, and
took her up the river, and called her "little woman"; and when she
held up her mouth he said tantalizingly that she must wait until he
had finished his cigar. This queer delight enjoyed, back he popped her
into the story, where she was again the vehicle for such glorious
sentiments that Elspeth, to whom he read the best of them, feared he
was becoming too good to live.

In the meantime the great penny public were slowly growing restive,
and at last the two little round men called on Pym to complain that he
was falling off; and Pym turned them out of doors, and then sat down
heroically to do what he had not done for two decades--to read his
latest work.

"Elspeth, go upstairs to your room," whispered Tommy, and then he
folded his arms proudly. He should have been in a tremble, but
latterly he had often felt that he must burst if he did not soon read
some of his bits to Pym, more especially the passages about the
hereafter; also the opening of Chapter Seventeen.

At first Pym's only comment was, "It is the same old drivel as before;
what more can they want?"

But presently he looked up, puzzled. "Is this chapter yours or mine?"
he demanded.

"It is about half and half," said Tommy.

"Is mine the first half? Where does yours begin?" "That is not
exactly what I mean," explained Tommy, in a glow, but backing a
little; "you wrote that chapt