"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 less than twenty-five or thirty dollars, unless recipes are like poetry. Peter said the other day that if a poet did not have some other profession to support him, he would starve to death on all he was paid for writing the most beautiful things that ever are written in all this world.
Peter says even an effort to write a poem is a beautiful thing.""Well, maybe that used to be the truth," said Katy as she started toward the door, "but I have been reading some things labeled 'poetry' in the magazines of late, and if the holy father knows what they mean, he's even bigger than ever I took him to be.""Katy," said Linda, "we are dreadful back numbers. We are letting this world progress and roll right on past us without a struggle. We haven't either one been to a psychoanalyst to find out the color of our auras.""Now God forbid," said Katy. "I ain't going to have one of them things around me. The colors I'm wearin' satisfy me entoirely.""And mine are going to satisfy me very shortly, now," laughed Linda, "because tomorrow is my big day with Eileen. Next time we have a minute together, old dear, I'll have started my bank account.""Right ye are," said Katy, "jist exactly right. You're getting such a great girl it's the proper thing ye should be suitably dressed, and don't ye be too modest.""The unfortunate thing about that, Katy, is that l intimated the other day that I would be content with less than half, since she is older and she should have her chance first.""Now ain't that jist like ye?" said Katy. "I might have known ye would be doing that very thing.""After I have gone over the accounts," said Linda, "I'll know better what to demand. Now fly to your cooking, Katy, and let me sit down at this table and see if I can dig out a few dollars of honest coin; but I'm going to have hard work to keep my eves on the paper with that fireplace before me. Isn't that red and blue lettering the prettiest thing, Katy, and do you notice that tiny 'P. M.' cut down in the lower left-hand corner nearly out of sight? That, Katy, stands for 'Peter Morrison,' and one of these days Peter is going to be a large figure on the landscape. The next Post he has an article in I'll buy for you.""It never does," said Katy, "to be makin' up your mind in this world so hard and fast that ye can't change it. In the days before John Gilman got bewitched out of his senses I did think, barrin' your father, that he was the finest man the Lord ever made; but I ain't thought so much of him of late as I did before.""Same holds good for me," said Linda.
"I've studied this Peter," continued Katy, "like your pa used to study things under his microscope. He's the most come-at-able man. He's got such a kind of a questionin' look on his face, and there's a bit of a stoop to his shoulders like they had been whittled out for carryin' a load, and there's a kind of a whimsy quiverin' around his lips that makes me heart stand still every time he speaks to me, because I can't be certain whether he is going to make me laugh or going to make me cry, and when what he's sayin' does come with that little slow drawl, I can't be just sure whether he's meanin' it or whether he's jist pokin' fun at me. He said the quarest thing to me the other day when he was here fiddlin' over the makin' of this fireplace. He was standin'
