"Hardly exciting enough, I fear, to suit the popular taste," she commented. "A story, like a play, should have a 'villain.'"
I laughed and said I would use Wesson for that character. I could, if necessary, invent some disreputable things and attach them to his pseudonym.
"And how shall you describe me?" she asked, demurely.
"You will have to wait and see. I shall make one important stipulation. Your part of this writing will be merely mechanical unless I call for aid. It is to be my story, not yours."
"It is a strange idea," she said, watching my face. "Really, I think you had best keep on with your family tree. I am getting quite interested in the Alexanders and Colins who preceded the Dugalds and the Donalds."
"No, I am determined," was my reply. "We will leave those aged gentlemen in their graves and begin the true history of the Marjories and the Dons. There will be time enough for both before you and I end our partnership."
She responded dutifully at last that she was at my disposal, as far as the use of her time was concerned. It was agreed that on the very next morning the novel would be begun.
"And you must not interrupt me, either with approval or disapproval?" I said. "For whatever is written I alone will be responsible."
"That will be hard, when, as I suppose, you will discuss me more or less," she said, with a bewitching pout. "How do I know you will not make me out the most disreputable female that ever lived? But I promise. In fact, I don't see as there is anything else I can do. I am working for wages and I might as well offer to alter a business letter as a story in which I am merely an amanuensis."
"I shall carry our original contract into the novel," I said. "There will be no falsehood. If I have suspected any person, or repented of my suspicions—if I have resolved not to fall in love, and afterwards done so—it will be all there. I shall record what has transpired with the accuracy of a Kodak, even if, like the sensitive plate, it has to be taken into a dark room for development."