being alone! How delightful it is. We have enjoyed that best of all. We had so few opportunities before we were married, Peter appearing to think it was our duty to play whist each evening, with most cheerful countenances; and were I, out of sheer desperation, to trump his best card, he would scream with annoyance.

But I'm not getting on with Dimbie's points. I think his dearest friend, or even his wife or mother, would be over-stepping the strict boundary-line of truth were they to describe him as handsome. He's not handsome. For which Nanty, mother's old schoolfellow, says I should be deeply grateful. Handsome men, she tells me, have no time to admire their own wives, so taken up are they with their own graces, which is a pity for the wives.

In addition to the crooked nose I mentioned Dimbie has also a crooked mouth, giving him the most humorous, comical, and at the same time the most kindly expression. I wouldn't have Dimbie's mouth straight for the world. It droops at the left corner. He opines that he was born that way, that it must be a family mouth, at which his mother is extremely indignant. She asserts that the mouths in her family at any rate were quite perfect, and that this droop is the result of a horrid pipe which was never out of the corner of his mouth, alight or dead, throughout his college days. Dimbie laughs at this, and says shall he grow a moustache to cover up the defect, and I say No, he shan't.

The crook of his mouth and nose happen to be in opposite directions, so even when he's depressed he looks quite happy and amused.

Nature, trying to balance things up a little, then gave him jolly, blue, twinkling eyes, and crisp brown hair with little kinks in it.

He will be thirty-one on the second of next month. His mother, whom I have only once seen and that was at our wedding, doesn't approve of his telling his age to any casual inquirer in his usual direct manner, for it naturally gives her own age away. Mrs. Westover, Nanty says, imagines she would pass for under forty when the wind is in the west.

"Why west?" mother and I had cried together.

"A soft damp west wind will make a woman look ten years younger," said Nanty sagely. "It is a north wind which works such havoc with her complexion."

Mother and I have learnt a great deal from Nanty one way or another, and the funny part of it is that the information which doesn't matter always seems to stick in my memory, while important things go, which Dimbie says is the way of the world.

Dimbie is "on" the Stock Exchange. Peter calls it a sink of iniquity and its denizens liars and thieves. One of the liars and thieves married me on the strength of a good deal in Rio Tintos. Rio Tintos must be beautiful things to have been the means of giving us so much happiness. Dimbie says they are not, that they are just plain copper mines in Spain. Dimbie is mistaken. Copper is one of the most beautiful of metals with its red-gold, warm colour. It is the most romantic of metals. A tin mine in Cornwall would never have done for us what Rio Tintos have done, I feel convinced. The dictionary says copper was perhaps the first metal employed by man, which makes it doubly interesting to me. Each day I scan the financial column of the paper to see if Rio Tintos are up or down. Dimbie says he has no interest in them now, and smiles at my eagerness, but it makes no difference. The words stand to me for happiness, and I shall search for them always.

CHAPTER II

NANTY DISCOURSES ON THE WRITING OF BOOKS

When I casually mentioned to Nanty—yesterday afternoon over our tea—that I had begun to write a book I was unprepared for her opposition, which almost amounted to a command that I should do nothing of the kind. But then she misunderstood me from the very beginning, which was only natural now I come to reflect upon it, added to which she has a disconcerting habit of jumping to conclusions.

At the outset of our conversation her manner was depressed as she looked into the fire.

"Ah, well," she said at length, "it can't be helped! I suppose you mean a first-person, diary, daily-round sort of book?"

I nodded, pleased at her acumen.

"It is the worst and most tiresome kind, but perhaps it will be best for your poor husband."

"My poor husband!" I echoed.

"Yes."

"Will you kindly explain?"

"It will be difficult, but I'll try."

She settled herself in her chair more comfortably.

"It appears to me that women, dear Marguerite, write books from several motives, the principal being that, unknown to herself, a woman will get rid in this way of her own self-consciousness. It is hard on the public; it is a blessing in disguise to her friends."

"Nanty!"

"I don't say you are of that sort. Why, I believe the child's eyes are actually full of tears!" she added in consternation.

"Go on," I said.

"But you're going to be hurt."

I shook my head.

"Well, I will add at once that I should not expect to find in the pages of your book as much self-consciousness as is customary in a young girl of your years. General Macintosh is not a person to encourage illusions about oneself. To live with him must be an education, painful but liberal."

I smiled faintly.

"Some women write books because they are lonely. An absorbing occupation, even if badly performed, helps to pass the time, and they yearn to see themselves in print. In fact, all writers yearn to see themselves in print—a most natural desire on their part, but one to be discouraged in this age of over-publication. Other women write because they say they 'love it.' I am not sure that this type isn't the worst of the lot. They imagine because they love it that they must necessarily do it well. Not at all, the deduction is a poor one. I love bridge, but rarely pull off a 'no trumper.'

"And a few, a very few, write because they have really something to say, something to tell. Something new—no, not new, there is nothing new under the sun, but a fresh way of telling an old story. A burning force, something stronger than themselves, which is another name for genius, compels them to speak, to give their message, and the world is the gainer. Now why do you want to write? Which of these four impulses is yours?"

She rose and drew on her gloves.

"A burning force stronger than myself, which is another name for genius."

She laughed.

"You're not offended with me?" she asked as I conducted her to the gate.

"Just a teeny bit, Nanty."

"Well, you mustn't be."

She took my two hands in both of hers.

"I couldn't dream of permitting you to sulk with me, little Marguerite. I've known you since the days when you wore a pinafore and had to be slapped for washing some snails in the best toilet ware in my spare room before throwing them to the ducks—nasty child. It seems hard to discourage you, to talk to you thus, but whatever in the name of fortune has put such a dreadful idea into your head?"

"Do you think it so dreadful?"

"Terribly dreadful!" she returned. "I knew an authoress—I beg her pardon, I mean an author—who after a small success with her first book—nasty, miry sort of book it was too—left her husband, quite a decent man as men go, with red hair and freckles (they lived in the country), and went to London to see life as she called it, which meant sitting on the top of a penny omnibus and eating rolls and butter at an A.B.C. She wore her hair à la Sarah Bernhardt, and expected to have an intrigue, which never came off, the lady being past forty and plain at that. When her second edition money—I think it got into a second edition—was finished she was very glad and thankful to creep back to her husband, who in a big, magnanimous way took her in, which I wouldn't have done. Then I knew another author—successful fifth edition this was—whose head became so swelled that some cows in a