it. Why, what a perfect cormorant you
are!"

They laughed over his voracity, and he promised it should be held in
check as to the point which he had thought for a moment might be worked
so effectively into the play.

The next morning Louise said to her husband: "I can see, Brice, that you
are full of the notion of changing that love business, and if I stay
round I shall simply bother. I'm going down to lunch with papa and
mamma, and get back here in the afternoon, just in time to madden
Godolphin with my meddling."

She caught the first train after breakfast, and in fifteen minutes she
was at Beverly Farms. She walked over to her father's cottage, where she
found him smoking his cigar on the veranda.

He was alone; he said her mother had gone to Boston for the day; and he
asked: "Did you walk from the station? Why didn't you come back in the
carriage? It had just been there with your mother."

"I didn't see it. Besides, I might not have taken it if I had. As the
wife of a struggling young playwright, I should have probably thought it
unbecoming to drive. But the struggle is practically over, you'll be
happy to know."

"What? Has he given it up?" asked her father.

"Given it up! He's just got a new light on his love business!"

"I thought his love business had gone pretty well with him," said
Hilary, with a lingering grudge in his humor.

"This is another love business!" Louise exclaimed. "The love business in
the play. Brice has always been so disgusted with it that he hasn't
known what to do. But last night we thought it out together, and I've
left him this morning getting his hero and heroine to stand on their
legs without being held up. Do you want to know about it?"

"I think I can get on without," said Hilary.

Louise laughed joyously. "Well, you wouldn't understand what a triumph
it was if I told you. I suppose, papa, you've no idea how Philistine you
are. But you're nothing to mamma!"

"I dare say," said Hilary, sulkily. But she looked at him with eyes
beaming with gayety, and he could see that she was happy, and he was
glad at heart. "When does Maxwell expect to have his play done?" he
relented so far as to ask.

"Why, it's done now, and has been for a month, in one sense, and it
isn't done at all in another. He has to keep working it over, and he has
to keep fighting Godolphin's inspirations. He comes over from Manchester
with a fresh lot every afternoon."

"I dare say Maxwell will be able to