"Right. After my snake had filed his income tax returns, we still had enough money to purchase this house and to support us for a couple of years. The only trouble is, his royalties have stopped coming in and that money is all used up. I still haven't been able to sell any of my landscape paintings. So we haven't any income, and that's why you and I can't marry for a long time yet—if ever!"
Her exquisite brows wrinkled with concentration. "I don't understand. Has Droozle written himself out?"
"Far from it," answered Jean, seating himself and parking Droozle on his knee. "He's writing more than ever."
"The quality is gone, then?"
Jean shook his head. "No, he's writing superlatively."
"Then what is the problem?" she asked, now thoroughly mystified.
"He's writing classics!" burst out Jean in baffled irritation. "He won't write anything else! Easily seeing the approaching catastrophe, I wrote long persuading essays to him. It was pathetically useless. Proudly he continued to write his Rise and Fall of the Western Plainsman in a lucid, passionate prose which would evoke an imperishable picture—but in three thousand pages."
"I think classics are nice," protested Judy, "and one of these days I'm going to read another one."
Huskily Jean told her the worst. "Writing classics consumes paper by the ton. And if you ever get your 750,000 word story finished, you must then start shrinking it back to an acceptable 75,000 words. This is a nearly hopeless task. Of course if you can get it back to 75,000 words the digest magazines will have no trouble shrinking it to 15,000 words or fifteen pictures, and you then get your fingers in the till." He paused and all hope fled from his face. "Droozle won't live nearly long enough to get all of that shrinking done. And in the meantime that scribbling snake is writing me out of house and home!"
"Are you going to let him get away with it?" the girl challenged.