cians are second-rate beings, at
best."

"I am sorry. Perhaps you can suggest a remedy," Arlt replied literally.

"Cast off your leading strings, and work out your own theories to suit
yourselves," Bobby answered unhesitatingly. "Now look here, I used to
think that it was greater to create music than to evolve literature; now
I know more, I know it isn't. When a man writes a book, he goes ahead
and does it according to the light of nature and the sense that is in
him. Sometimes it is good; mostly it isn't, but at least he has done it
out of himself and by himself. When you write a symphony, you do it out
of yourself, but not by yourself. You do it by the exact rules that
somebody else before you has laid down. You can have just so many themes
and so many episodes, though it would puzzle the _Concertmeister_ of the
heavenly choir to tell where the themes leave off and the episodes
begin. You know you have got those rules to hang on to, and they are a
great support in seasons of mental famine. Two themes and a subsidiary,
and a lot of episodes for padding: that's all you need, and they are
bound to come on in just a given order. Can you imagine a novelist
sitting down and fitting his work neatly into a box measured off into
compartments: one hero, one heroine, one extra, plus episodic sunsets
and moonbeams galore? Not much! He makes his rules as he goes along.
Sally, which is greater, to create a gown, or to cut it out by a paper
pattern?"

"To cut it out, of course," Sally answered unexpectedly. "The patterns
never fit, and it is more work to bring them into the shape of any human
being than it is to start out with a free hand, in the first place."

But Miss Gannion challenged her.

"Sally, did you ever make a gown?"

"Never; but that doesn't prevent my having theories," Sally replied
airily.

"And I have had practice. I attempted once, when my years were less and
my zeal more, to clothe an orphan with the work of my own hands. I
thought I would operate free hand, as you call it, and I wish you could
have beheld the result. The orphan's own mother would never have
recognized her babe in the midst of the strange, polyangular bundle of
cloth. I suspect that the same might be said of a good many novelists,
and that a judicious trimming of the seams according to some established
pattern might improve their work."

Arlt nodded approvingly.

"As usual, Miss Gannion has spoken wisely," he remarked.

"Miss Gannion h