sire? Yes; she
would write.

Thoughts came quick and fast; words flowed in a fiery stream like lava
that glows and rushes and curls and leaps down the mountain, sweeping
all obstacles aside. (The figure did not wholly please Melinda, for
everybody knows how dull and gray and uninteresting lava is when it
cools, but she had no time to bother with another.) She felt the
exultation, the joy and uplifting of spirit that is the reward--usually,
alas, the sole reward--of the writer in the work of creation.

Then before the lava had time to cool she sent the story to the first
magazine on her list with a name beginning with "A." It was her custom
to send them that way, though sometimes with a desire to be impartial
she commenced at "Z" and went up the list.

At the end of two weeks the wind had ceased blowing from the east.
Melinda decided that though life for her must be gray, echoing, void,
yet would she make an effort for the joy of others. She would lift
herself above the depression that enfolded her even as the buoyant
hyacinths were cleaving their dark husks and lifting up the beauty and
fragrance of their hearts to solace passers-by. Therefore she ceased
parting her hair in the middle and ordered a simple little frock from
D----'s--hyacinth blue _voile_ with a lining that should whisper and
rustle like the glad winds whisking away last year's leaves.

Then the day came when she strolled carelessly and unexpectantly down
the village street to the post-office and there received a letter that
bore on the upper left-hand corner of the envelope the name of the
magazine first on her list beginning with "A." A chill passed along
Melinda's spine. That humorous story--Could this mean?--It was too
horrible to contemplate.

She took a short cut through the orchard and as she walked she tore off
a corner and peeped into the envelope. Yes, there was a pale-blue slip
of paper with serrated edges. She leaned against a Baldwin apple-tree to
think.

How true it is that one should be prepared for the unexpected. Melinda
had sent out many manuscripts freighted with tingling hopes and eager
aspirations and with the postage stamps that insured their prompt
return; how was she to know, by what process of reasoning could she
infer that this, that had been offered simply from force of habit, would
be retained in exchange for an aesthetically tinted check? She
anathematized the magazine editor. (That seems the proper thing to do
with ed