"Of course it's any amount better than anything I could write, Elaine. I think your imagination is really wonderful. But--"
"Go on." This time it was Elaine who did the prompting. Mrs. Marshall only compressed her lips.
"It seemed to me that there were a good many things in your story that girls can't be expected to know much about, love and crime and remorse and all that sort of thing. And all the characters are counts and countesses and--Well, I never saw a countess--"
"And you're wondering if I ever did. Well, no."
"I should think," suggested Peggy, feeling the beads of perspiration start on her forehead, "that it would be better to write about the things you know. That's all."
"But I don't know anything worth writing about," said Elaine sharply. Then in a changed voice, "O, I see! Probably that's just the reason I oughtn't to try it."
"It seems to me," floundered Peggy, wondering how editors ever lived through the ordeal of rejecting manuscripts, "that after you've lived longer--"
"I believe," interjected Mrs. Marshall witheringly, "that Bryant wrote 'Thanatopsis' at eighteen."
"I believe he did," Peggy acknowledged meekly.
"But this isn't 'Thanatopsis,'" said Elaine, surveying "The Daughter's Defiance," with critical eye, "and I'm not Bryant. That's all Peggy means." She smiled with a courage that did not conceal a quiver of pain, and Peggy looked at her with a contrition no less keen because she herself felt the need of sympathy.