compliment!

"'You don't suppose, do you, I sit here like an
old-fashioned editor, reading voluntary
contributions? No, my dear girl; I have a small,
well-broken staff of writers, and I tell them what
to write. If I find myself, for example, with a
lot of parade interiors taken in expensive homes,
I select four or five, turn 'em over to
Abramovitz, and tell him to do us something on
"The More Dignified Dining-Room" or "The Period
Salon, a Study in Restfulness." Abramovitz knows
exactly what to say, and how to point the
snobbish-but-not-too-snobbish captions and feature
the best names. I've no need to experiment, you
see. I count on Abramovitz. Just so with other
matters. Here's an article, now, on "The Flaunting
Paeony." Skeat did that, of course. It's signed
"Winifred Snow"--all his flower-and-sundial stuff
is--and it couldn't be better! I don't even have
to read it.

"'Well, there you are! I'm simply a purveyor of
standardized goods in standardized packages. Dull
work, but it pays.'

"'Exactly!' I struck in. 'It pays! That's why I'm
interested. Sister and Togo and I need the
money!'"

As for the brilliant, intertwined circles frequented by Maltby as a
social being, within which, he hoped to persuade Susan, lay true
freedom, while habit slyly bound her with invisible chains--well, they
are a little difficult to describe. Taken generally, we may think of
them as the Artistic Smart Set. Maltby's acquaintance was wide,
penetrating in many directions; but he felt most at home among those
iridescent ones of earth whose money is as easy as their morals, and
whose ruling passion for amusement is at least directed by aesthetic
sensibilities and vivacious brains.

Within Maltby's intersecting circles were to be found, then, many a
piquant contrast, many an anomalous combination. There the young,
emancipated society matron, of fattest purse and slenderest figure,
expressed her sophisticated paganism through interpretative dancing; and
there the fashionable painter of portraits, solidly arrived, exhibited
her slender figure on a daring canvas--made possible by the fatness of
her purse--at one of his peculiarly intimate studio teas. There the
reigning _ingenue_, whos