“Hear, hear!” cried Barbara, laughing.
“—And how proud we are of her,” went on the impetuous House Plant “Just because you have no soul is no reason why you should deny its possession by others!”
“Well, I’ve stirred you all up, anyway,” said the Infant, comfortably. “And that is all I wanted.”
Barbara took the spoon out of the fudge dreamily. “You may be right,” she said to the Infant. “You know I didn’t get the Eastman Scholarship.”
“Don’t you ever mention that odious thing again!” cried Atalanta. “You know that the whole class thinks you should have had it.”
Barbara turned her face aside to hide a momentary shadow.
“Well, in any case,” she said, “there is work ahead for me. Every one who anticipates a literary career must work hard for recognition.”
“You won’t have to,” declared the House Plant, hugging her chum, and followed by a murmur of assent from the floor. “Why, Babbie, didn’t you get five dollars from that Sunday-School Journal, and don’t they want more stories at the same rate? I think that is splendid!”
“I shall not write insipid little stories when I go home,” Barbara answered, smiling kindly down at the enthusiastic little devotee who had subsided at her feet “I shall write something really worth while,—perhaps a story which will unveil characters in all their complexity and show how they are swayed by all the different elements which enter into environment—”