AVERIL."

"Couldn't you have changed her name?"

"No, the thing was impossible. I tried to, but I couldn't do it, any
more than I could change yours. AVERIL was so real to me that no matter
what other name I tried to give her I just thought of her as AVERIL
behind it all. But finally I got a plot that matched her. Then came the
excitement of choosing names for all my characters. You have no idea
how fascinating that is. I've lain awake for hours thinking over those
names. The hero's name is PERCEVAL DALRYMPLE."

"Have you named ALL the characters?" asked Diana wistfully. "If you
hadn't I was going to ask you to let me name one--just some unimportant
person. I'd feel as if I had a share in the story then."

"You may name the little hired boy who lived with the LESTERS," conceded
Anne. "He is not very important, but he is the only one left unnamed."

"Call him RAYMOND FITZOSBORNE," suggested Diana, who had a store of such
names laid away in her memory, relics of the old "Story Club," which she
and Anne and Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis had had in their schooldays.

Anne shook her head doubtfully.

"I'm afraid that is too aristocratic a name for a chore boy, Diana. I
couldn't imagine a Fitzosborne feeding pigs and picking up chips, could
you?"

Diana didn't see why, if you had an imagination at all, you couldn't
stretch it to that extent; but probably Anne knew best, and the chore
boy was finally christened ROBERT RAY, to be called BOBBY should
occasion require.

"How much do you suppose you'll get for it?" asked Diana.

But Anne had not thought about this at all. She was in pursuit of fame,
not filthy lucre, and her literary dreams were as yet untainted by
mercenary considerations.

"You'll let me read it, won't you?" pleaded Diana.

"When it is finished I'll read it to you and Mr. Harrison, and I shall
want you to criticize it SEVERELY. No one else shall see it until it is
published."

"How are you going to end it--happily or unhappily?"

"I'm not sure. I'd like it to end unhappily, because that would be so
much more romantic. But I understand editors have a prejudice against
sad endings. I heard Professor Hamilton say once that nobody but a
genius should try to write an unhappy ending. And," concluded Anne
modestly, "I'm anything but a genius."

"Oh I like happy endings best. You'd better let him marry her," said
Diana, who, especially since her engagement to Fred, thought this was
how every story sho