Have you ever heard the Lady--the
one that I sit next to at the table--say anything about me?
I have not really made her acquaintance, I said. She seems to me a
little distant in her manners and I have respected her pretty evident
liking for keeping mostly to herself.
--Oh, but when you once do know her! I don't believe I could write
stories all the time as I do, if she didn't ask me up to her chamber, and
let me read them to her. Do you know, I can make her laugh and cry,
reading my poor stories? And sometimes, when I feel as if I had written
out all there is in me, and want to lie down and go to sleep and never
wake up except in a world where there are no weekly papers,--when
everything goes wrong, like a car off the track,--she takes hold and sets
me on the rails again all right.
--How does she go to work to help you?
--Why, she listens to my stories, to begin with, as if she really liked
to hear them. And then you know I am dreadfully troubled now and then
with some of my characters, and can't think how to get rid of them. And
she'll say, perhaps, Don't shoot your villain this time, you've shot
three or four already in the last six weeks; let his mare stumble and
throw him and break his neck. Or she'll give me a hint about some new
way for my lover to make a declaration.
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