“You manage to maintain the level of your stuff. It makes me sore, you write so much better than I do!”
Frances Mary smiled somewhat dryly. “I’ve been at it longer than you.”
“That hasn’t got anything to do with it. You have an instinct for perfection, while I’m all over the place!”
“Perfect stories of perfect ladies to adorn the chaste pages of our leading family magazine!” she said, smiling still.
“It doesn’t matter what they’re about, they’re well done!” said Wilfred.
“I suppose I do write better than you do now,” she said, ceasing to smile. “But my work is much the same as it was ten years ago when I began. There is more hope in your unevenness than in my dead level.”
“I truckle to the editors,” said Wilfred glooming.
“So you do,” admitted Frances Mary—and laughed when he looked up resentfully. “But as long as you know it, the case is not hopeless.”
“I’m no good!” said Wilfred, touching bottom.
“Have it your own way,” she said. “You are in one of your self-accusatory moods to-day, and to argue with you only strengthens your obstinacy. I’ll wait until you come out of it.”