"A lovely young girl, Leila (English, yellow hair, sixteen) lives on a beautiful isle which had been a volcano hundreds of years before. (This will not be mentioned till the last, but mysterious remarks made about rumblings, to prepare the mind.) Dolores (Spanish), aged seventeen, pretends to be her friend, but is really jealous. They stay together at a country house with a veranda, and exciting things happen. Leila is supposed to be an orphan, and Dolores patronises her because she is poor. An English officer comes to call, and staggers back at sight of Leila. (He is really her father.) Dolores makes mischief, and persuades him to leave her all his money. They go to the lawyers, and Leila goes out for a sail in a boat to cheer her spirits. While she is sailing, the volcano blows up and everyone is killed. Leila is picked up by a passing ship, and inherits the money." Compared with this sensational programme, Susan's story promised to be deplorably tame and uneventful, and Dreda curled her lip in scorn as she read the neatly written lines: "I want to write the story of a man who was naturally very nervous and afraid, but who hid it so well that everyone believed him to be a hero. I want to show that he really did become brave, because his friends believed in him, and he tried to be worthy of their trust." "Gracious! How dull. It sounds like a tract. Susan is a dear; but she's a currant bun when all is said and done, and she can't get away from it. They _are_ stodgers!" quoth Miss Dreda, with a shrug, as she placed the paper beside her own in her desk. Her anger against Susan had died a rapid death, for the double reason that she herself found it impossible to harbour resentment, and that Susan steadily refused to be a second party to a quarrel. Scornfully though her help had been refused, she offered it afresh every evening, and after three days' experience of struggle and defeat, Dreda was thankful to accept. "But you _were_ mean about the editorship, all the same. It wasn't like you, Susan!" she declared severely, feeling it would be too great a condescension to capitulate without protest. "You are generally quite sweet about helping other people. I don't understand what you were thinking about!" Susan's quiet smile seemed to express agreement with this last statement, but she made no protest and allowed herself to be kissed and petted with a condescending "We'll say no more about it, will we, dear? Now for this exercise--it's a perfect brute!" It was only by dint of ceaseless entreaties and cajoleries that the sub- editor succeeded in collecting a respectable number of entries for the first number of the magazine before the appointed date, and if the absolute truth had been known she was already feeling overweighted with the cares of office. It was a fag to be worried out of one's life, and as a result to be disliked rather than praised.