rather boyish and unnecessary.
His sudden and unexpected meeting with Helen and their talk together had
tended to make him over-sentimental, that was all. He and she were to be
friends, of course, but there was no real danger of his allowing himself
to think of her except as a friend. No, indeed. He opened the bureau
drawer in search of a tie, and there was the package of "snapshots" just
where he had tossed them that night when he first returned home
after muster-out. Helen's photograph was the uppermost. He looked at
it--looked at it for several minutes. Then he closed the drawer again
and hurriedly finished his dressing. A part, at least, of his resolve
of the night before had been sound common-sense. His brain was suffering
from lack of exercise. Work was what he needed, hard work.

So to work he went without delay. A place to work in was the first
consideration. He suggested the garret, but his grandmother and Rachel
held up their hands and lifted their voices in protest.

"No, INDEED," declared Olive. "Zelotes has always talked about writin'
folks and poets starvin' in garrets. If you went up attic to work he'd
be teasin' me from mornin' to night. Besides, you'd freeze up there, if
the smell of moth-balls didn't choke you first. No, you wait; I've got a
notion. There's that old table desk of Zelotes' in the settin' room. He
don't hardly ever use it nowadays. You take it upstairs to your own room
and work in there. You can have the oil-heater to keep you warm."

So that was the arrangement made, and in his own room Albert sat down at
the battered old desk, which had been not only his grandfather's but
his great-grandfather's property, to concentrate upon the first of
the series of stories ordered by the New York magazine. He had already
decided upon the general scheme for the series. A boy, ragamuffin son
of immigrant parents, rising, after a wrong start, by sheer grit and
natural shrewdness and ability, step by step to competence and success,
winning a place in and the respect of a community. There was nothing new
in the idea itself. Some things his soldier chum Mike Kelley had told
him concerning an uncle of his--Mike's--suggested it. The novelty he
hoped might come from the incidents, the various problems faced by his
hero, the solution of each being a step upward in the latter's career
and in the formation of his character. He wanted to write, if he could,
the story of the building of one more worth-while Ame