Dreda gasped with horror.
“Why, even at home, where we are only six, we have an—an—” She paused, anxiously searching for a word which should be sufficiently vague—“an annual, with stories, and illustrations, and correspondence columns just like real. I was ‘Aunt Nelly’ and answered the questions. Such sport! ... ‘Yes, my dear, at fifteen you are certainly far too young to be secretly engaged. Confide the whole story to your dear mother. A mother is ever a young girl’s wisest confidante.’—(Of course, no one really asked me that. I made it up. You have to make up to fill the page.) ... ‘So sorry your complexion is spotty. Rub it over with lemon juice and oil. Never mind if you are ugly. Be good, and you’ll get a sweet expression, and that is better than any beauty.’ ... Ha, ha!” She tossed her golden mane with a derisive laugh. “Just like a real mag.! Then I put things in for the boys, of course—got them out of cricket reports and encyclopaedias—it looks out well to have learned bits here and there. And you can give lovely hints! It would be awfully useful in a school, because you could say whatever you wanted without being personal ... ‘No! the old adage, “Finding is keeping” does not apply to your companions’ indiarubbers and pencils. It is not considered honourable in good society to pare off initials inscribed thereon for purposes of identification.’” She chuckled happily. “Don’t I do it well? I really have the knack! ... I can’t think why you don’t have one.”
“How should we find the time?” queried Susan earnestly. “First to compose the things—and then write them out neatly would take hours and hours.”
“I would write them out. It looks ever so much better if it’s all in one handwriting.”
The girls exchanged glances. Dreda certainly wrote a very legible hand, but they were already beginning to feel a trifle dubious about her ready promises.
“My dear, it would take years! You would never get through. Only yesterday you were preparing us for softening of the brain from overwork. You really must curb this overflowing energy.” Nancy narrowed her eyes in her most fascinating smile, in which still lurked a spice of derision. “Your welfare is very precious to us; we can’t afford to risk it for the sake of a magazine!”
Dreda flushed, and wriggled impatiently on her seat. She never could tell whether Nancy was in fun or in earnest.
“I am not proposing to take on more work. It would be a distraction!” she declared loftily. “I love making up stories and poetry, and reading what other people have written. I’d get up early, and do it in play hours. It would be a labour of love. Besides, it would cultivate our style. ‘The Duck’ is literary herself. I dare say she’d let it count as composition!”
The girls brightened visibly at this suggestion. It would be distinctly more amusing to write for their own magazine than to cudgel their brains to produce a sheet full of ideas on the abstruse subjects suggested by Miss Drake. They edged a little nearer the fire, straightened their backs, and fell to discussion.
“Perhaps she might.”