my way I'd have passed around the morphine to the whole bunch early
in the book."

Eve smiled. "I'm afraid you wouldn't care for this one either," she
said, indicating the book in her lap. "I heard this described as 'forty
chapters of agony and two words of relief.'"

"'The End,' eh? That was clever. You write stories yourself, don't you?"

"Of a sort, stories for little children about fairies, usually. They
don't amount to much."

"I'll bet they're darn--mighty good," said Wade, stoutly.

"I wish they were 'darned good,'" she laughed. "If they were they'd sell
better. I used to write little things for our college paper, and then,
when papa died, and there wasn't very much left after the executors had
got through, writing seemed about the only thing I could do. I took some
stories to the magazine that papa was editor of, and they were splendid
to me. They couldn't use them, but they told me where to take them and I
sold several. That was the beginning. Now I'm fast becoming a specialist
in 'Once-Upon-a-Time' stories."

"I'd like to read some of them," said Wade. "I'm awfully fond of fairy
stories." "Oh, but these are very young fairy stories, like--like this
one." Eve pulled a pencilled sheet of paper from the pages of her book,
smiled, hesitated, and read: "'Once upon a time there was a Fairy
Princess whose name was Dewdrop. She lived in a beautiful Blue Palace
deep in the heart of a Canterbury Bell that swayed to and fro, to and
fro, at the top of the garden wall. And when the sun shone against the
walls of her palace it was filled with a lovely lavender light, and when
the moon shone it was all asparkle with silver. It was quite the most
desirable palace in the whole garden, for it was the only one that had a
view over the great high wall, and many fairies envied her because she
lived in it. One of those who wanted the Blue Palace for himself was a
very wicked fairy who lived under a toadstool nearby. He was so terribly
wicked that I don't like to even tell you about him. He never got up to
breakfast when he was called, he never did as he was told, and he used
to sit for hours on top of his toadstool, putting out his tongue at all
the other fairies who flew by. And he did lots and lots of other
things, too, that only a thoroughly depraved fairy could ever think of,
like putting cockleburs in the nests where the baby birds lived, and
making them very uncomfortable, and chasing the moles about underground,
and ma