“Mhmph,” I reply.
Sis shuts the door, but opens it again almost immediately.
“Don’t let the Infants bother you. But if Frieda’s upstairs and they come to you for something to eat, don’t let them have any cookies before dinner. If they’re really hungry they’ll eat bread and butter.”
I promise, dreamily, my last typewritten sentence still running through my head. The gravy seems to have got into the heroine’s calm gray eyes. What heroine could remain calm-eyed when her creator’s mind is filled with roast beef? A half-hour elapses before I get back on the track. Then appears the hero—a tall blond youth, fair to behold. I make him two yards high, and endow him with a pair of clothing-advertisement shoulders.
There assails my nostrils a fearful smell of scorching. The roast! A wild rush into the kitchen. I fling open the oven door. The roast is mahogany-colored, and gravyless. It takes fifteen minutes of the most desperate first-aid-to-the-injured measures before the roast is revived.
Back to the writing. It has lost its charm. The gray-eyed heroine is a stick; she moves like an Indian lady outside a cigar shop. The hero is a milk-and-water sissy, without a vital spark in him. What’s the use of trying to write, anyway? Nobody wants my stuff. Good for nothing except dubbing on a newspaper!
Rap! Rap! Rappity-rap-rap! Bing! Milk!
I dash into the kitchen. No milk! No milkman! I fly to the door. He is disappearing around the corner of the house.
“Hi! Mr. Milkman! Say, Mr. Milkman!” with frantic beckonings.
He turns. He lifts up his voice. “The screen door was locked so I left youse yer milk on top of the ice-box on the back porch. Thought like the hired girl was upstairs an’ I could git the tickets to-morra.”