rough
the walls and discovered Bea the sole student with time to burn--or to
talk, for that matter. Trot along, Beatrice, and tell him that Gertrude
is coming the moment she has dug her way out of this avalanche of
manuscript. I can't possibly spare her for half an hour yet. Go and
distract his mind from his unnatural sister by means of another story."

"Tell him about your little original in math, Bea," called Lila after
her, "that's your best and latest."

Bea retraced her steps to thrust back an injured countenance at the door.
"I guess I am able to converse as well as monologue, can't I?" she
demanded indignantly, "you just listen."

However, when confronted by a young man with a monosyllabic tongue and an
embarrassingly eloquent pair of eyes, she seized a copy of the last
Annual from the table in the senior parlor, and plunged into an account
of her own editorial trials.

Gertrude is on the board for this year's Annual, you know, and Berta
Abbott is chairman. At this very moment they are struggling over a deluge
of manuscripts submitted in their prize poem contest. Of course, I
sympathize, because I have been through something of the same ordeal. The
Monthly offered a prize for a short story last fall, and we had rather a
lively sequel to the decision. Shall I tell you about it from the
beginning? At our special meeting, I read the stories aloud, because I
happen to be chief editor. Nobody said anything at first. Janet, the
business editor, tipped her chair back and stared at the piles of
magazines on the shelves opposite. Laura, who does the locals, pressed
her forehead closer to the pane to watch the girls hurrying past on their
way to the tennis tournament on the campus. Adele and Jo, the literaries,
nibbled their fountain-pens.

I spread out the manuscripts, side by side, in a double row on the big
sanctum desk, picked up my scribbled pad, leaned back till the swivel
screw squeaked protestingly from below, and said, "Well?"

Janet brought her chair down on all four feet with a bump. "Nary one is
worth a ten dollar prize," she declared pugnaciously, "especially now
that Robbie Belle has gone to the infirmary for six weeks and she can't
help me in soliciting advertisements."

Laura turned her head. "Robbie Belle had promised to write up the first
hall play for me. She was going to review two books for Jo and compose a
Christmas poem for Adele's department. I think maybe there are perhaps a
dozen or so gir