please the child to see the poems in print and be able to give
the book to her friends. She did give it to her friends," he went
on ruefully, "and ever since she's been trying to live it down.
I've seen her bite a young fellow's head off when he tried to
make a grand-stand play with her by quoting her poems which he'd
found in his sister's book-shelf."

"But, in the name of goodness, what has all this to do with young
Crocker?"

"Why, it was this way. Most of the papers just gave Ann's book a
mention among 'Volumes Received,' or a couple of lines that
didn't amount to anything, but the _Chronicle_ saw a Sunday feature
in it, as Ann was going about a lot then and was a well-known
society girl. They sent this Crocker boy to get an interview from
her, all about her methods of work and inspirations and what not.
We never suspected it wasn't the straight goods. Why, that very
evening I mailed an order for a hundred copies to be sent to me
when the thing appeared. And--" pinkness came upon Mr. Pett at
the recollection "it was just a josh from start to finish. The
young hound made a joke of the poems and what Ann had told him
about her inspirations and quoted bits of the poems just to kid
the life out of them. . . . I thought Ann would never get over
it. Well, it doesn't worry her any more--she's grown out of the
school-girl stage--but you can bet she isn't going to get up and
give three cheers and a tiger if you bring young Crocker to live
in the same house."

"Utterly ridiculous!" said Mrs. Pett. "I certainly do not intend
to alter my plans because of a trivial incident that happened