"Haven't read it? Why not?"
"She hasn't asked me to."
"Why, Jerry! I thought you didn't want me to," exclaimed Jane.
"Let me tell you one thing, Jane Judd, I'll not leave this house until I have a copy in my hands. I'd rather read a book by you! Why, Jane, you old sphinx, how could you do it? Tell me the whole thing."
"She won't tell you a word. I had to drag it out of her," Jerry remarked.
"Very well, you tell me," Bobs ordered.
Jerry smiled.
"It's quite a drama. The first act set is little town. Heroine in pigtails, yearning with ambition to be George Sand or George Eliot or some of the great female scribblers. Encouraged by doting mother, she writes essays on Spring. Act two, plays in the great, cruel city. Heroine, orphaned and penniless, comes to fight for fame. Like the poor match-girl, she knows hunger and cold, while she peddles her works—in vain. Am I accurate, Jane?"
"Quite," she said calmly.
"She is forced to take a mere job to buy food. Enter a brilliant but impoverished artist, with the job in his right hand. Heroine toils by day that she may create by night. Midnight oil, cold tenement room, you know. Abraham Lincoln stuff."