“I gave her a plot for a story,” said Sam.
One of the rabbit-faced young men said that he could never understand how fellows—or women, for that matter—thought up ideas for stories—or plays, for the matter of that—or, as a matter of fact, any sort of ideas, for that matter.
“This,” Sam explained, “was something that actually happened—to a friend of mine.”
The other rabbit-faced young man said that something extremely rummy had once happened to a pal of his. He had forgotten what it was, but it had struck him at the time as distinctly rummy.
“This fellow,” said Sam, “was fishing up in Canada. He lived in a sort of shack.”
“A what?” asked the blonde shingled girl.
“A hut. And tacked up on the wall of the shack was a photograph of a girl, torn out of an illustrated weekly paper.”
“Pretty?” asked the dark shingled girl.
“You bet she was pretty,” said Sam devoutly. “Well, this man spent weeks in absolute solitude, with not a soul to talk to—nothing, in fact, to distract his mind from the photograph. The consequence was that he came to look on this girl as—well, you might say an old friend.”
“Sleddon,” said Mr. Braddock, “more champagne.”