Chapter 16: Margaret Is Puzzled

Miss Dorothy Johnson, balancing herself on the edge of the table, was playing catch-ball with a pair of gloves.

“Margaret Wallace, you’re one of the sillies!”

“Evidently you are not the only person who is of that opinion.”

“That’s right--put the worst construction on everything I say, and think yourself smart.”

“It’s just as well that some one should think so. Dollie, sometimes I’m very near to the conviction that it’s no good--that nothing’s any good, and, especially, that I’m no good; that I might as well own myself beaten right away.”

“Well, you are beaten this time, that’s sure. What ought to be just as sure is that you don’t mean to be beaten every time--there’s the whole philosophy of life for you in a nutshell.”

“But suppose I’m dragging Harry down? I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s all through me that his MSS. keep on being returned. I said to him, ‘Let me make drawings to illustrate your stories--I’d love to’. And I do love to! ‘Then we’ll send the stories and the drawings to the editors together.’ But they nearly all come back. I’ve a horrid feeling that it’s my drawings which ruin them.”

“Stuff! It’s Harry’s work that’s no good.”

“No good? How dare you! You’ve said yourself over and over again that it’s splendid.”

“That’s what’s against it--it’s splendid.” Miss Johnson, stretching her right arm to its extreme length, dangled her gloves between the tips of her fingers. “Margaret Wallace, literature means to me at least three pounds a week, it may be four, if possible, five. I can live on three, be comfortable on four, a swell on five. The problem being thus stated in all its beautiful simplicity, it only remains for me to discover the quickest and easiest solution. I have learned, from experience, that the Home Muddler is willing to give me half a guinea for a column of drivel, and the Hearthstone Smasher fifteen shillings for another. The Family Flutterer prints eight or ten thousand words of an endless serial at five shillings a thousand--one of these days I mean to strike for seven-and-six. But in the meantime there you are--the pursuit of literature has brought me bread and cheese. Why doesn’t your Harry tread the same path?”

“The idea!”

“Of course!--the idea!--and that’s where he gets left. It’s my experience that in literature----”

“Literature!”

“I said literature. I was observing, when you interrupted, that it is my experience that in literature”--Miss Johnson paused, Miss Wallace was contemptuously silent--”men always get paid at least twice as much as the women. I don’t know why; it seems to be one of the rules of the game. It therefore follows that if your Harry did as I do he would earn six, eight, ten pounds a week, which, with management, would keep two--not to speak of your drawings, which ought to bring in something. I believe the Family Flutterer pays as much as seven-and-six for a full page.”

“My dear Dollie, you know as well as I do that we both of us would rather starve.”

“Sweet Meg, I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, only, if you have resolved to eschew the easily earned loaves and fishes, don’t revile because, having set out on the track of the rarer creatures, you discover--what every one knows, and you know!--that they are difficult to find. My private opinion is that Harry will find them one day--if he keeps on long enough--though I don’t know when.”