ad wall between some equally
distinguished rolled oats and a new five-cent cigar. Personally I
think I first saw the 'gypsy' face to face when the Hon. Seneca Bowers
told me that save 'Betsey and I Are Out' he had read no poem but mine
in twenty years. That was my 'Ohio,' though of course Mrs. Hilliard's
request for an author's reading at the Culture Club was an annunciation
in itself. Am I becoming fabulously rich from my royalties? Alas! no;
I must buy too many presentation copies for people who fancy that I
obtain gratis really more than I know what to do with. Shall I write
for the stage? I could as easily write a cook book. Do I give my
autograph? Always, if a stamped envelope is enclosed. One of our
hardest-working presidents daily set apart a time for autographs; why
then should a popular writer pretend that it bores him? He is secretly
tickled, and probably collects autographs himself."

Ruth laughed, but denied that he had exhausted her questions.

"Why did you withhold your name from your masterpiece?" she asked.

"Partly because it was my masterpiece,--it would be false modesty to
deny that I know it,--and I had some notion of digging a pit for the
critics. But the main reason was to confound my Uncle Peter."

"I didn't know you had an uncle."

"I haven't in the flesh. 'Uncle Peter' is generic--a polite lumping
together of my chronic fault-finders within the family and without.
You know him. Both masculine and feminine, he's eternally an old
woman. Everybody knows Uncle Peter, the first to censure and the last
to praise. Now, as I've been his especial tidbit and awful example for
years, I had to school myself to the thought of snatching the daily
morsel of gossip from his mouth. The murder out, Uncle Peter's grief
is pitiful. How much sharper than a serpent's tooth is a prophecy of
evil unfulfilled! It's not that he considers I've gone to work,
incorrigible vagabond that I am; it's the fact that my intolerable
idling has produced money which sets his teeth on edge--money, the
golden calf of Uncle Peter's narrow idolatrous soul."

Ruth had no liking for his moments of acid mockery.

"Don't let Uncle Peter overshadow your friends," she warned.

"I'll not," promised the man. "And you--by what witchery of friendship
did you find me out?" He shifted his seat, seeking her eyes. "Ruth,
was it love?"

She did not answer immediately.

"Be my wife, Ruth," he said.

"It was not love," s