“Dear me!” said Helen with the air of one who never suspected such a thing of a friend. “Dear me!” she said again. “I am sure I could never do it. You will have to do it yourself. What is it going to be about?”
“Why, I have to have time to think,” said Rosanna. “You have to think a long time when you are going to be an author. It is very difficult.”
“You don’t suppose you are all out of practice, do you?” asked Helen anxiously. “Why, Rosanna, that would be too perfectly splendid! A real play! Where could we give it? We couldn’t rent a real theatre.”
“Oh, my, no!” said Rosanna, beginning to be rather frightened at the picture Helen was conjuring up. “We won’t have that sort of a play. We will have a little one that we can give in grandmother’s parlor, or over at Mrs. Hargrave’s.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Helen stoutly. “I just know you can write a beautiful play, Rosanna, and I think we ought to give it in some big place where a lot of people can come, and we will have tickets, and chairs all in rows and a curtain and everything.”
“Oh, I don’t believe I could write a good enough play for all that,” cried Rosanna.
“Well, just do the best you can and I know it will be perfectly lovely.”
“I tell you what,” said Rosanna, beginning to be sorry that she had spoken. “Please don’t tell Elise or anyone about it until I see what I can write, and then after you and I have read it, if it is good enough, we will show it to Uncle Robert and see what he says.”
“It will be good enough,” said Helen positively. “Just think of the piece of poetry you wrote to read at the Girl Scout meeting. It was so lovely that I ’most cried. All that part about the new moon, and how you felt when you died. It sounded so true, and yet I don’t see how you know how you are going to feel when you die. I can’t feel it at all. I suppose that is because you are a poet. Mother says it is a great and beautiful thing to be a poet, but that you must look out for your digestion.”