“P. S.--I forgot to say that your little protégée, Eris, does extremely well whatever is required of her. She plays one of those self-conscious rustics, half educated, vain, credulous, and with a capacity for a world of mischief. I’m a pig, I suppose, but I’m glad Crystal Gray cut the part to slivers. Eris has no experience and no training, of course, but she screens well, is intelligent, and does exactly what Frank Donnell tells her to do. “She comes, diffidently, to sit in my hammock with me after dinner, and curls up like a tired kitten. But, like a kitten, she is receptive, responsive, ready to play or be talked to--an unspoiled, generous nature already actively forming a character the daily development of which is very interesting to watch. “I told her I was writing to you. She asks, _very_ shyly, to be ‘faithfully remembered.’ “I, also, but _not_ faithfully. “BETSY.” CHAPTER XII A short story every Sunday would have grilled the brains out of anybody, even a born story-teller. Perhaps quality might have suffered; perhaps the thread of invention would have snapped had not Annan’s contract with the _Planet_ ended with September. He had done twenty stories for Coltfoot in six months. Those stories made Annan. It had finally come to--“Have you read Barry Annan in this week’s number?” That, and a growing hostility always certain to be aroused by recognition, were making of the young man a personage. From the very beginning, scarce knowing why, he had avoided the shallow wallow of American “letters,” where the whole herd roots and snouts--literati, critics, public,--gruffling and snuffling for the legendary truffle disinterred and gobbled up so long--so long ago. Already the younger aspirants hailed him. Already the dreary brethren of the obvious stared disapproval. The dull read him as they read everything. It takes all kinds of pasture to keep a cow in cud. She chews but never criticises. Realists peered at him evilly and askance. His description of swill didn’t smell like the best swill. There were mutterings of “heretic.” The “small-town” school found fault with his microscope. Waste nothing--their motto--had resulted in a demand for their rag-carpets. But here was a man who saved only a handful of threads and twisted them into a phrase which seemed to do the duty of entire chapters. No, the small-town school took a sniff at Annan and trotted on down the alley. As for the Romanticists, squirming and writhing and weaving amid their mess of properties and scenery, what did they want of the substance when the shadow cost nothing? No, Annan didn’t fit anywhere. He was just a good story-teller.