XII

Oliver Crowe, at his desk in the copy-department of Vanamee and Co.'s,
has been spending most of the afternoon twiddling pencils and reading and
rereading two letters out of his pocket instead of righteously thinking up
layouts for the new United Steel Frame Pulley Campaign. He realizes that
the layouts are important--that has been brought to his attention already
by several pink memoranda from Mr. Delier, the head of the department--but
an immense distaste for all things in general and advertising in particular
has overwhelmed him all day. He looks around the big, brightly lighted room
with a stupefied sort of loathing--advertising does not suit him--he is
doing all he can at it because of Nancy--but he simply does not seem to get
the hang of the thing even after eight months odd and he is conscious
of the fact that the Powers that be are already looking at him with
distrustful eyes, in spite of his occasional flashes of brilliance. If he
could only get _out_ of it--get into something where his particular kind of
mind and training would be useful--oh well--he grunts and turns back to his
private affairs.

The letter from Easten of Columbiac Magazines--kindly enough--but all
hope of selling the serial rights of his novel gone glimmering because of
it--Easten was the last chance, the last and the best. "If you could see
your way to making short stories out of the incidents I have named, I
should be very much interested--" but even so, two short stories
won't bring in enough to marry on, even if he can do them to Easten's
satisfaction--and the novel couldn't come out as a book now till late
spring--and Oliver has too many friends who dabble in writing to have any