“By way of reminding me of roses you stick the thorns into me—four, I think—and two I’m doing now, besides Miss Lauderdale’s. There’s been a depression down town. That accounts for the small number. Portrait painters suffer first. In hard times people don’t want them.”
“Yes,” answered Griggs, thoughtfully. “Portrait painters and hatters. Did you know that, Crowdie? When money is tight in Wall Street, people don’t bet hats, and the hatters say it makes a great difference.”
“That’s queer. And you—how many books have you written?”
“Since last summer? Only one—a boshy little thing of sixty thousand.”
“Sixty thousand what?” asked Hester. “Dollars?”
“Dollars!” Griggs laughed. “No—only words. Sixty thousand words. That’s the way we count what we do. No—it’s a tiresome little thing. I had an idea,—or thought I had,—and just when I got to the end of it I found it was trash. That’s generally the way with me, unless I have a stroke of luck. Haven’t you got an idea for me, Mrs. Crowdie? I’m getting old and people won’t give me any, as they used to.”
“I wish I had! What do you want? A love story?”
“Of course. But what I want is a character. There are no new plots, nor incidents, nor things of that sort, you know. Everything that’s ever happened has happened so often. But there are new characters. The end of the century, the sharp end of the century, is digging them up out of the sands of life—as you might dig up clams with a pointed stick.”
“That’s bathos!” laughed Crowdie. “The sands of life—and clams!”