not so?"

I'm afraid I shrugged my shoulders. It was all so much harder than I had
expected. What did they want me to do? I asked myself, bitterly.

Von Gerhard went on. "Why not go where the newspaper work will not be so
nerve-racking? where you still might find time for this other work that
is dear to you, and that may bring its reward in time." He reached out
and took my hand, into his great, steady clasp. "Come to the happy,
healthy, German town called Milwaukee, yes? Ach, you may laugh. But
newspaper work is newspaper work the world over, because men and women
are just men and women the world over. But there you could live sanely,
and work not too hard, and there would be spare hours for the book that
is near your heart. And I--I will speak of you to Norberg, of the Post.
And on Sundays, if you are good, I may take you along the marvelous lake
drives in my little red runabout, yes? Aber wunderbar, those drives are!
So."

Then--"Milwaukee!" shrieked Max and Norah and I, together. "After New
York--Milwaukee!"

"Laugh," said Von Gerhard, quite composedly. "I give you until to-morrow
morning to stop laughing. At the end of that time it will not seem quite
so amusing. No joke is so funny after one has contemplated it for twelve
hours."

The voice of Norah, the temptress, sounded close to my ear. "Dawn dear,
just think how many million miles nearer you would be to Max, and me,
and home."

"Oh, you have all gone mad! The thing is impossible. I shan't go back to
a country sheet in my old age. I suppose that in two more years I shall
be editing a mothers' column on an agricultural weekly."

"Norberg would be delighted to get you," mused Von Gerhard, "and it
would be day work instead of night work."

"And you would send me a weekly bulletin on Dawn's health, wouldn't you,
Ernst?" pleaded Norah. "And you'd teach her to drink beer and she shall
grow so fat that the Spalpeens won't know their auntie."

At last--"How much do they pay?" I asked, in desperation. And the thing
that had appeared so absurd at first began to take on the shape of
reality.

Von Gerhard did speak to Norberg of the Post. And I am to go to
Milwaukee next week. The skeleton of the book manuscript is stowed
safely away in the bottom of my trunk and Norah has filled in the
remaining space with sundry flannels, and hot water bags and medicine
flasks, so that I feel like a schoolgirl on her way to boarding-school,
instead of like a seasoned old ne