"Thank goodness no. On the contrary. An editor came to life. I've sold a series of stories to the Ultra Urban, two hundred plunks per. 'Melissa on the Road' is the general title, Melissa being, of course, Suzanne, thinly disguised. I thought I might as well make copy out of myself and I did. I've given things so close to the way they really were that every one will swear they are fiction of the most romancy order."
"Are they coming out under your own name?" Barb found breath to ask.
"No. I thought they might begin to appear before I had a chance to explain things, so it seemed better to break the shock, as it were. They are anonymous, which will make them more spicy."
"Good for you!" chuckled Phil. "I'll bet they are spicy all right."
"But the best isn't told. I've written a play--a real play that is going to make the managers sit up on their haunches and beg prettily. And I've got a Star in my crown--I mean in my circle of friends--who wants to play the lead. What do you think of that? Let Broadway stop, look, and listen. Suzanne is coming, Hurray! Hurray!" she chanted. "I'll cause more of a sensation than my predecessor at the bath. Now, tell me the news."
CHAPTER XIX
OH, SUZANNE!
It was not until Phil had gone and Barb and Suzanne were reduced to the intimate kimono and pigtail state that Barb got the full force of the stream of Suzanne's confidences.
"When I think what a fool I was only just last September I could weep, if only it weren't so killingly funny." Suzanne sat up in bed to announce. "I thought because I had a pretty knack of juggling words and a little mother wit I could just walk right in and conquer the literary and dramatic world as easy as anything. The trouble with college is it gives you an over-dose of fine spun theories about life and doesn't teach you a thing about being up against the real article. Maybe it couldn't. I guess we all have to knock that lesson out of the bed rock itself with a chisel or a pick axe. I've tried both ways. I don't know all there is to know yet by a long shot but I know a whole heap more than I did, which is something to be thankful for." And the speaker thumped the pillow with her doubled fist rather as she had thumped Sylvia's hammock cushions the preceding September.
Barb, listening, sighed a little as she wondered if this knowledge of life were as desirable as Suzanne seemed to think. It left one a little tired, she thought, this knowing things.