commanded, as he seated himself on the front steps with a determination
which was as business-like as his management of the Electric Light
Company.

"I think I had better go to Sue's to thaw out some of my loneliness
over this play," I answered him as I looked up with desperation and a
smudge on my face. Then I went to my room and left Tolly alone with
Peter's poor little heroine. "Say, tell the poet to get the man with the
dinner-pail who is eating hunk sandwiches at lunch-time on the pavement
in front of any construction job in New York to tell him what he did and
said to his girl at the firemen's ball the night before, and then
translate it into some of this first-class poetry. That'll be a great
play," said Tolly, as I came down-stairs just as he had turned page
twenty-five of Peter's manuscript. Tolly's coarseness doesn't affect me
as it does Edith because there is always so much point to it.

"You don't quite understand Peter and his play, Tolly, dear," I said,
with dignity, though I felt exactly the same way about it and hadn't
known how to express it in human interest terms as well as Tolly.

"I sure don't," answered Tolly, cheerfully, and not at all as if I had
put him in his place in regard to his criticism of our epic. "Come on;
let's hurry. Everybody is waiting for us."

It was good to be in a buzz of girls and men once more for the first
time in two weeks since I settled down to do my worst or best by Peter,
with my Grandmother Nelson's garden-book locked up in the
preserve-closet down in the darkest corner of the cellar, and Sam lost
in the fastness of The Briers.