She had never known this kind of happiness before—exploring a dream country which promised to become real. Now and then a tiny cloud shadowed the radiance of her emotions: just how would she begin?—what should she write about and how?—but swiftly her thoughts flitted back to that soft, warm, undefined deliciousness...
Society Editor!—she, Melissa Merriam! Her words would be immortalized in print! and she would soar up and up... Some day, in the big magazines... Everybody would read her name there—all Cherryvale—and, perhaps, Ridgeley Holman Dobson would chance a brilliant, authoritative article on some deep, vital subject and wish to meet the author.
She might even have to go to New York to live—New York! And associate with the interesting, delightful people there. Maybe he lived in New York, or, anyway, visited there, associating with celebrities.
She wished her skirts were long enough to hold up gracefully like Polly Currier walking over there across the street; she wished she had long, dangling ear-rings; she wished...
Dreamy-eyed, the Society Editor of the Cherryvale Beacon turned in at the Merriam gate to announce her estate to an amazed family circle.
Aunt Nettie, of course, ejaculated, “goodness gracious!” and laughed. But mother was altogether sweet and satisfying. She looked a little startled at first, but she came over and smoothed her daughter's hair while she listened, and, for some reason, was unusually tender all the afternoon.
That evening at supper-time, Missy noticed that mother walked down the block to meet father, and seemed to be talking earnestly with him on their way toward the house. Missy hadn't much dreaded father's opposition. He was an enormous, silent man and the young people stood in a certain awe of him, but Missy, somehow, felt closer to him than to most old people.
When he came up the steps to the porch where she waited, blushing and palpitant but withal feeling a sense of importance, he greeted her jovially. “Well, I hear we've got a full-fledged writer in our midst!”
Missy's blush deepened.
“What I want to know,” father continued, “is who's going to darn my socks? I'm afraid socks go to the dickens when genius flies in at the window.”