Then she re-read with extreme care the letter she had found at the Post
Office that day in reply to the one she had written Marian purporting to
come from an admirer. Writing slowly and thinking deeply, she answered
it. She tried to imagine that she was Peter Morrison and she tried to
say the things in that letter that she thought Peter would say in the
circumstances, because she felt sure that Marian would be entertained
by such things as Peter would say. When she finished, she read it over
carefully, and then copied it with equal care on the typewriter, which
she had removed to her workroom.

When she heard Katy's footstep outside her door, she opened it and drew
her in, slipping the bolt behind her. She led her to the fireplace and
recited the lines.

"Now ain't they jist the finest gentlemen?" said Katy. "Cut right off
of a piece of the same cloth as your father. Now some way we must
get together enough money to get ye a good-sized rug for under your
worktable, and then ye've got to have two bits of small ones, one for
your hearthstone and one for your aisel; and then ye're ready, colleen,
to show what ye can do. I'm so proud of ye when I think of the grand
secret it's keepin' for ye I am; and less and less are gettin' me
chances for the salvation of me soul, for every night I'm a-sittin'
starin' at the magazines ye gave me when I ought to be tellin' me beads
and makin' me devotions. Ain't it about time the third was comin' in?"

"Any day now," said Linda in a whisper. "And, Katy, you'll be careful?
That editor must think that 'Jane Meredith' is full of years and ripe
experience. I probably wouldn't get ten cents, no not even a for-nothing
chance, if he knew those articles were written by a Junior."

"Junior nothing!" scoffed Katy. "There was not a day of his life that
your pa did not spend hours drillin' ye in things the rest of the
girls in your school never heard of. 'Tain't no high-school girl that's
written them articles. It's Alexander Strong speakin' through the medium
of his own flesh and blood."

"Why, so it is, Katy!" cried Linda delightedly. "You know, I never
thought of that. I have been so egoistical I thought I was doing them
myself."

"Paid ye anything yet?" queried Katy.

"No," said Linda, "they haven't. It seems that the amount of interest
the articles evoke is going to decide what I am to be paid for them, but
they certainly couldn't take the recipe and the comments and the sketch
for les