tment I began to feel as if I'd suddenly become proprietor of a
whole circus full of champing steeds. I tried to persuade Phyllis that I
should write better stories if I could travel a little in my own
motor-boat, as it would broaden my mind; therefore it would pay in the
end. Besides, I wasn't sure my health was not breaking down from
overstrain; not only that, I felt it would be _right_ to go; and,
anyhow, I just would go--so there.

I argued till I was on the point of fainting or having a fit, and I've
no doubt that it was my drawn face (what face wouldn't have been drawn?)
to which Phil's soft heart and obstinate mind finally succumbed.

She said that, as I seemed determined to go through fire and water (I
never heard of any hot springs in the canals of Holland), she supposed
she would have to stick by me, for she was older than I and couldn't
allow me to go alone under any consideration, especially with my
coloring and hair. But, though experience of me had accustomed her to
shocks and, she must confess, to sacrifices, she had never expected
until now that she would be called upon for my sake to become an
adventuress.

As for the two hundred pounds, that part didn't signify. I needn't
suppose she was thinking of it; thank Heaven, whether we worked or were
idle we would still have our settled hundred and twenty pounds a year
each. It was our reputation for which she cared most, and she was sure
the _least_ evil that could befall us would be to blow up.

"Better do it on a grand scale in a thirty horse-power motor-boat than
in a gas-meter bath-tub of a five-room flat in Clapham," I remarked; and
somehow that silenced Phyllis, except for a sigh.

Since then I've been in a whirl of excitement preparing my watery path
as a motor-boat adventuress, and buying a dress or two to suit the part.
It doesn't even depress me that Phil has selected hers with the air of
acquiring a serviceable shroud.

I've finished up three serials in as many days, killing off my villains
like flies, and creating a perfect epidemic of hastily made matches
among titled heroes and virtuous nursery governesses. Scarcely an
aristocratic house in England that wouldn't shake to its foundations if
fiction were fact; but then my fiction isn't of the kind that anything
short of a dislocated universe could possibly make fact.

Phyllis, with the face of a tragic Muse, has been writing letters to her
clients recommending another typist--quite a profes