Audrey groaned. "Oh, Irene, I simply ache with longing to write. I have stories and stories in my brain, and I feel sometimes as though my head will burst if I don't write them down. I would sit up all night, or get up very, very early in the morning to write them, but I am always so sleepy, I can't keep my eyes open. I tried once or twice, but I found I was only putting down nonsense."
"There is one thing," said Irene comfortingly, "you are very young—there is plenty of time. Perhaps when Mrs. Carlyle is better, and you have done with schooling, you will be able to have more time."
"But it is now—now, that I want it," cried Audrey, springing to her feet. "Oh, I must tell you, Irene. Do you remember those magazines granny bought me, and I lent to you in the train that day?" Irene nodded. "Well, in one—The Girl's World—there was a prize of three guineas offered for the best original Christmas play for children to act." Audrey hesitated a moment, and coloured again beneath Irene's now eager eyes.
"Yes, yes," said Irene.
"Well,"—Audrey in her nervousness was twisting the kitchen 'runner' into cables, and binding her arms up with it—"I began to write one for it. I—I longed to so—I had to. I wanted to write the play, and I wanted to earn the money. Oh, I wanted it ever so badly—to help father."
"Well?" Irene gasped breathlessly, "are you doing it?"
"I began it—but I have had to drop it. I wrote the first scene—I had just finished it that day Mary cut her finger, and you cooked the dinner. But I have scarcely touched it since. One wants a good long time at it; five minutes now and then are no good. But there has been so much else to do, and now I feel—I feel quite guilty if I try to get more."
"Poor Audrey!" Irene murmured sympathetically. "I am sure you oughtn't to feel guilty. If one feels as strongly about any kind of work as you do, I think it shows that one is meant to do it. Don't you?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Audrey, with a little puzzled, weary sigh. She rose to her feet, hung up the 'runner,' and drew towards her a big basket of peas that Job Toms had brought in from the garden. "I think this is what I am meant to do, and, after all, it is—well, I daresay it helps just as much as the prize-money would, even if I were lucky enough to get it."
Irene did not answer, but began shelling peas too. She worked in an abstracted manner though, and was evidently lost in thought.