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PAGE 5

Two Business Women
by [?]

As for his actual compositions, he had only the ambition to make them as workmanlike as he could. He made little landscapes; he drew little interiors. He tried to get people up and down stairs in the fewest words that would make the picture. And when he thought that he had scored a little success he would count the number of words he had used and determine to achieve the same effect with the use of only half that number.

Well, G. G.’s lung healed again; and this time he was very careful not to overdo. He had gained nine pounds, he wrote to Cynthia–“saved them” was the way he put it; and he was determined that this new tissue, worth more than its weight in gold, should go to bank and earn interest for him–and compound interest.

“Shall I get well?” he asked that great dreamer who dreamed that there was hope for people who had never hoped before–and who has lived to see his dream come true; and the great dreamer smiled and said:

“G. G., if growing boys are good boys and do what they are told, and have any luck at all–they always get well!”

Then G. G. blushed.

“And when I am well can I live where I please–and–and get married–and all that sort of thing?”

“You can live where you please, marry and have children; and if you aren’t a good husband and a good father I dare say you’ll live to be hanged at ninety. But if I were you, G. G., I’d stick by the Adirondacks until you’re old enough to–know better.”

And G. G. went back to his rooms in great glee and typewrote a story that he had finished as well as he could, and sent it to a magazine. And six days later it came back to him, with a little note from the editor, who said:

“There’s nothing wrong with your story except youth. If you say so we’ll print it. We like it. But, personally, and believing that I have your best interests at heart, I advise you to wait, to throw this story into your scrap basket, and to study and to labor until your mind and your talent are mature. For the rest, I think you are going to do some fine things. This present story isn’t that–it’s not fine. At the same time, it is so very good in some ways that we are willing to leave its publication or its destruction to your discretion.”

G. G. threw his story into the scrap basket and went to bed with a brand-new notion of editors.

“Why,” said he to the cold darkness–and his voice was full of awe and astonishment–“they’re–alive!”

III

Cynthia couldn’t get at G. G. and she made up her mind that she must get at something that belonged to him–or die. She had his letter, of course, and his kodaks; and these spoke the most eloquent language to her–no matter what they said or how they looked–but she wanted somehow or other to worm herself deeper into G. G.’s life. To find somebody, for instance, who knew all about him and would enjoy talking about him by the hour. Now there are never but two people who enjoy sitting by the hour and saying nice things about any man–and these, of course, are the woman who bore him and the woman who loves him. Fathers like their sons well enough–sometimes–and will sometimes talk about them and praise them; but not always. So it seemed to Cynthia that the one and only thing worth doing, under the circumstances, was to make friends with G. G.’s mother. To that end, Cynthia donned a warm coat of pony-skin and drove in a taxicab to G. G.’s mother’s address, which she had long since looked up in the telephone book.

“If she isn’t alone,” said Cynthia, “I shan’t know what to say or what to do.”

And she hesitated, with her thumb hovering about the front-door bell–as a humming-bird hovers at a flower.