“Oh, all sorts,” said Madeline. “Handkerchiefs and fountain pens and gold beads and reputations.”
The novel was the chief excitement during the stormy voyage home. It was to be a sort of log-book of the journey, with the merry match-making for its main theme. Mary Brooks, because of her habit of utilizing local happenings to advantage in her themes, had been “elected” to write it, the camera fiends were to furnish the illustrations, and the rest were to give suggestions and act as advisory committee.
Fortunately Mary belonged to the small minority of the ship’s passengers who were not seasick, and she amused herself and everybody else in the party but Ethel with the chapters of the novel, or novelette as she modestly called it. She found her audience interested, but extremely critical.
“I shall never be an authoress,” she declared firmly on the last afternoon of the voyage, when most of the invalids had come on deck and sat about warmly wrapped in rugs and golf capes. “I had thought of devoting myself to literature next year, but I’ve changed my mind. The general public is too hard to suit, if you are fair samples. Roberta thinks I have too much description of Nassau, and now Betty thinks I haven’t enough. Bob says the conversation sounds stilted, and yesterday Helen Adams told me that it wasn’t high-flown enough for college faculty.”
“Then you’ll have to be guided by the dictates of your own inborn genius,” said Babbie, grandiloquently. “An ‘Argus’ editor ought to know how to write a story without asking advice from all her ‘young friends,’ Mary.”
“Thank you in the name of the ‘Argus’ editors,” murmured Mary, recalling a scathing comment to the same effect that Dr. Hinsdale had put on her last psychology report.
“Somehow,” said Helen Adams, tumbling into the conversation in her funny abrupt fashion, “somehow—Mary’s story is interesting—but it does sound awfully made up. You would never guess it had really happened, would you?”
“That’s because I am a romanticist,” said Mary, calmly. “I don’t suppose you little juniors know anything about romanticists, so I will explain that they are the kind of novelists who use their imaginations. In this case I really had to depend on my imagination because naturally I wasn’t there when the most exciting things happened. But when I have been there under somewhat similar circumstances,” added Mary, with a meaning smile, “this was about the way things went.”
“The chapter about Betty’s drowning is the worst of all,” declared Bob, “and it ought to be the best. It seemed exciting enough at the time, but when you think it over there’s nothing to it. Betty ought to have been out in water over her head, and Dr. Eaton ought to have sunk once or twice trying to bring her in, and really risked his life to save her. Then it would sound like something, and there would be some reason in the silly way you made the heroine act afterward.”
“I know it,” said Mary, doubtfully. “It would be a great deal more artistic that way. Shall I change it?”