twain were the better fitted to
teach wisdom to the other.

'And what would you do, Valentine, with heaps of money?' I asked.

Again for a moment his old shyness of me returned. Perhaps it was not
quite a legitimate question from a friend of such recent standing. But
his frankness wrestled with his reserve and once more conquered.

'Mama need not do any work then,' he answered. 'She isn't really strong
enough for it, you know,' he explained, 'and I'd buy back the big house
where she used to live when she was a little girl, and take her back to
live in the country--the country air is so much better for her, you
know--and Aunt Emma, too.'

But I confess that as regards Aunt Emma his tone was not enthusiastic.

I spoke to him--less dogmatically than I might have done a few minutes
previously, and I trust not discouragingly--of the trials and troubles
of the literary career, and of the difficulties and disappointments
awaiting the literary aspirant, but my croakings terrified him not.

'Mama says that every work worth doing is difficult,' he replied, 'and
that it doesn't matter what career we choose there are difficulties and
disappointments to be overcome, and that I must work very hard and say
to myself "I _will_ succeed," and then in the end, you know, I shall.'

'Though of course it may be a long time,' he added cheerfully.

Only one thing in the slightest daunted him, and that was the weakness
of his spelling.

'And I suppose,' he asked, 'you must spell very well indeed to be an
author.'

I explained to him, however, that this failing was generally met by a
little judicious indistinctness of caligraphy, and all obstacles thus
removed, the business of a literary gent seemed to him an exceptionally
pleasant and joyous one.

'Mama says it is a noble calling,' he confided to me, 'and that anyone
ought to be very proud and glad to be able to write books, because they
give people happiness and make them forget things, and that one ought to
be awfully good if one's going to be an author, so as to be worthy to
help and teach others.'

'And do you try to be awfully good, Valentine?' I enquired.

'Yes,' he answered; 'but it's awfully hard, you know. I don't think
anybody could ever be _quite_ good--until,' he corrected himself, 'they
were grown up.'

'I suppose,' he added with a little sigh, 'it's easy for grown-up people
to be good.'

It was my turn to glance suspiciously at him, this time wondering if the
s