“I wish it was him instead of me,” wistfully. For one does not lightly say ‘no’ to an Editress of “Silver Chimes”; not if one is Letty Johnson.
She stood uncertain, an envelope in either hand....
“Supposing.... After all, it was his idea and not mine, about pretending to be poor, and all that.... Almost, really, it’s as if I’d stolen it. Then supposing....”
Supposing what? That she should put his name, instead of hers, to the novelette? That she should surprise him by showing him a story by Sebastian Levi, in print, as he so much wanted to be? Just to make up for that other disappointment. Well, supposing you did, Letty? Nobody need ever know that Sebastian hadn’t written it, except Violet Baker; and she could be pledged to silence.
“I will!” resolved Letty, her grey-blue eyes clouded to seriousness beneath the tumbling fringe of her hair. “I’ll go and see the Editress myself.”
This was rather a tremendous undertaking. But the notion of being in a position to offer Sebastian the very thing he deemed lost to his desire, so inflated Letty’s courage, that she hardly faltered when the next day seeking an interview with—“your real friend and cousin, the Editress,” as the energetic little woman signed “Cousin Belle’s Chat with Her Girls,” which appeared every week on the last page of “Silver Chimes.”
—“You want to publish your little tale with a nom-de-plume? Why, certainly. We have one lady who always writes for us under the name: Joyella; and My Girls like her touch immensely.”
Letty groped in vain after some association of ideas between “Joyella” and a sale-of-underwear catalogue that she had seen in her mother’s hand that morning. Then gave up the search, and listened to what the Editress was saying in praise of “To Test Her Love.”