living, world-stained men and women. "We'll put on anything that
fits," said the Major.

"Oh, I arrange that--they fit in the pictures."

"I'm afraid I should do better for the modern books. I would come as
you like," said Mrs. Monarch.

"She has got a lot of clothes at home: they might do for
contemporary life," her husband continued.

"Oh, I can fancy scenes in which you'd be quite natural." And indeed
I could see the slipshod rearrangements of stale properties--the
stories I tried to produce pictures for without the exasperation of
reading them--whose sandy tracts the good lady might help to people.
But I had to return to the fact that for this sort of work--the daily
mechanical grind--I was already equipped; the people I was working
with were fully adequate.

"We only thought we might be more like SOME characters," said Mrs.
Monarch mildly, getting up.

Her husband also rose; he stood looking at me with a dim wistfulness
that was touching in so fine a man. "Wouldn't it be rather a pull
sometimes to have--a--to have--?" He hung fire; he wanted me to help
him by phrasing what he meant. But I couldn't--I didn't know. So he
brought it out, awkwardly: "The REAL thing; a gentleman, you know,
or a lady." I was quite ready to give a general assent--I admitted
that there was a great deal in that. This encouraged Major Monarch
to say, following up his appeal with an unacted gulp: "It's awfully