“It’s been going well,” he answered with a laugh. “I sold four stories in the Spring. That is how I was able to go to the country. I’ve got rid of three more since. I’ve been reeling them off.”
Frances Mary glanced at him, to see how this was to be taken.
“Oh, I know they’re putrid,” said Wilfred. “I’ve discovered the combination. You take a thoroughly nice fellow, and a thoroughly nice girl, and you invent difficulties to separate them; then you remove the difficulties. There are three old fables that you can work ad lib; the Cinderella motive; the Ugly Duckling Motive; and the Prince in Disguise. Work in a bit of novelty into the setting, and your story is hailed as Original; a sure go! That’s the sort of thing they fill the backs of the magazines with; they’ve got to have a lot of it.”
Frances Mary said nothing.
“Well, I had to be writing something,” he said; “or I’d have gone clean off my chump. That was the best I could fish up out of myself. The old keenness has gone.”
“How about the mountains?”
“The mountains did things to me,” he said flippantly; “but I couldn’t throw them!”
“Isn’t there good material in your social experiences last winter?”
“No,” said Wilfred quickly. Fearful of betraying his inward shiver, he added: “It’s been done too often. . . . There’s no lack of material. The lack is in me.”
She said no more on the subject.