t. That's chapter
fourteen. I don't like it much, it's so squshy, but I wrote it that
way because I read in a newspaper once that slops sold better than
anything else, and I'm writing this to sell, if I can."

"Have you named it?" Van Landing's voice was as serious as
Carmencita's. "I've been told that a good title is a great help to a
book. I hope yours will bring you a good deal of money, but--"

"So do I." Carmencita's hands came together fervently. "I'm bound to
make some money, and this is the only way I can think of until I'm
fourteen and can go to work. I'm just thirteen and two months, and I
can't go yet. The law won't let me. I used to think it took a lot of
sense to write a book, but the Damanarkist says it don't, and that
anybody who is fool enough to waste time could write the truck people
read nowadays. He don't read it, but I do, all I can get--I like it."

"I've never tried to write." Van Landing again glanced at the clock.
Noodles was staying an interminably long time. "Like you, I imagined
it took some measure of ability--"

"Oh, but it don't. I mean it doesn't take any to write things like
that." Carmencita's finger pointed to several backless magazines and a
couple of paper-bound books on the table behind her. "I read once that
people like to read things that make them laugh and cry and--and
forget about the rent money, and tell all about love-dovies and
villains and beautiful maidens, and my book's got some of all those
kinds of things in it. It hasn't got any--What did you say you thought
it took to write a book?"

"Ability--that is, a little of it."

"I guess that depends on the kind of book it is. I put something of
everything I could think of in mine, but I didn't put any ability in.
I didn't have any to put, and, besides, I wanted it to sell. That's
the chapter I love best." A large piece of brown paper was waved in
the air. "It's the one in which the Princess Patricia gets ready to
die because she hears her sweetheart making love to some one else, and
then she comes to her senses and makes him marry the other girl so
they can live miserable ever after, and the Princess goes about doing
good like Miss Frances. But I'm going to marry her to somebody before
I'm through--I'm--"

"You believe in marriage, then." Van Landing smiled, and, stooping,
picked up several sheets of paper evidently torn from a blank-book.
"This must be the courtship chapter. It seems rather sentimental."

"It is. R