one of the persons involved would have been willing
to help her to this. It looked like putting in another character, just
for that purpose, and of course he could not be put in without taking
the time to make him plausible, human, understandable ... and I had just
left out that charming widower for sheer lack of space. Well, why not
make it a first person story, and have the narrator be the one who takes
Mrs. Purdon to her sister's? The narrator of the story never needs to be
explained, always seems sufficiently living and real by virtue of the
supremely human act of so often saying "I".

Now the materials were ready, the characters fully alive in my mind and
entirely visualized, even to the smoothly braided hair of Ev'leen Ann,
the patch-work quilt of the old woman out-of-doors, and the rustic
wedding at the end, all details which had recently chanced to draw my
attention; I heard everything through the song of the swollen brook, one
of the main characters in the story, (although by this time in actual
fact, June and lower water had come and the brook slid quiet and
gleaming, between placid green banks) and I often found myself smiling
foolishly in pleasure over the buggy going down the hill, freighted so
richly with hearty human joy.

The story was now ready to write.

I drew a long breath of mingled anticipation and apprehension, somewhat
as you do when you stand, breathing quickly, balanced on your skis, at
the top of a long white slope you are not sure you are clever enough to
manage. Sitting down at my desk one morning, I "pushed off" and with a
tingle of not altogether pleasurable excitement and alarm, felt myself
"going." I "went" almost as precipitately as skis go down a long white
slope, scribbling as rapidly as my pencil could go, indicating whole
words with a dash and a jiggle, filling page after page with scrawls ...
it seemed to me that I had been at work perhaps half an hour, when
someone was calling me impatiently to lunch. I had been writing four
hours without stopping. My cheeks were flaming, my feet were cold, my
lips parched. It was high time someone called me to lunch.

The next morning, back at the desk, I looked over what I had written,
conquered the usual sick qualms of discouragement at finding it so
infinitely flat and insipid compared to what I had wished to make it,
and with a very clear idea of what remained to be done, plodded ahead
doggedly, and finished the first draught before noon.