"Of course I have!" I retorted, rather irritably. "Do you think I don't know the rudiments of my profession?"
"Well," he remarked, "won't it do?"
"No," I answered. "With marriage such a failure as it seems to be all round now-a-days, how can you pump up sorrow for anyone lucky enough to keep out of it?"
"Um," he mused, "how about the child that tells everybody not to cry, and then dies?"
"Oh, and a good riddance to it!" I replied, peevishly. "There are too many children in this world. Look what a noise they make, and what a lot of money they cost in boots!"
My editor agreed that I did not appear to be in the proper spirit to write a pathetic child-story.
He inquired if I had thought of the old man who wept over the faded love-letters on Christmas-eve; and I said that I had, and that I considered him an old idiot.
"Would a dog story do?" he continued: "something about a dead dog; that's always popular."
"Not Christmassy enough," I argued.
The betrayed maiden was suggested; but dismissed, on reflection, as being too broad a subject for the pages of a "Companion for the Home Circle "—our sub-title.
"Well, think it over for another day," said my editor.
"I don't want to have to go to Jenks. He can only be pathetic as a costermonger, and our lady readers don't always like the expressions."
I thought I would go and ask the advice of a friend of mine—a very famous and popular author; in fact, one of the most famous and popular authors of the day. I was very proud of his friendship, because he was a very great man indeed: not great, perhaps, in the earnest meaning
