"Well, you're safe from me. My interviewing days are over. I believe if I keep on getting better at the rate I've been going the last week, I shall be able to write a play this summer, besides doing my work for the Abstract. If I could do that, and it succeeded, the riddle would be read for me."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I should have a handsome income, and could give up newspaper work altogether."
"Could you? How glorious!" said Louise, with the sort of maternal sympathy she permitted herself to feel for the sick youth. "How much would you get for your play?"
"If it was only reasonably successful, it would be worth five or six thousand dollars a year."
"And is that a handsome income?" she asked, with mounting earnestness.
He pulled himself up in the hammock to get her face fully in view, and asked, "How much do you think I've been able to average up to this time?"
"I don't know. I'm afraid I don't know at all about such things. But I should like to."
Maxwell let himself drop back into the hammock. "I think I won't humiliate myself by giving the figures. I'd better leave it to your imagination. You'll be sure to make it enough."
"Why should you be ashamed of it, if it's ever so little?" she asked. "But I know. It's your pride. It's like Sue Northwick wanting to give up all her property because her father wrote that letter, and said he had used the company's money. And Matt says it isn't his property at all, and the company has no right to it. If she gives it up, she and her sister will have nothing to live on. And they won't let themselves be helped—any more than—than—you will!"