It rose to my lips to answer him that it was not always the books written very, very well that brought in the biggest heaps of money; that if heaps of money were his chiefest hope he would be better advised to devote his energies to the glorious art of self-advertisement and the gentle craft of making friends upon the Press. But something about the almost baby face beside me, fringed by the gathering shadows, silenced my middle-aged cynicism. Involuntarily my gaze followed his across the strip of foot-worn grass, across the dismal-looking patch of ornamental water, beyond the haze of tangled trees, beyond the distant row of stuccoed houses, and, arrived there with him, I noticed many men and women clothed in the garments of all ages and all lands, men and women who had written very, very well indeed and who notwithstanding had earned heaps of money, the hire worthy of the labourer, and who were not ashamed; men and women who had written true words which the common people had read gladly; men and women who had been raised to lasting fame upon the plaudits of their day; and before the silent faces of these, made beautiful by Time, the little bitter sneers I had counted truth rang foolish in my heart, so that I returned with my young friend to our green seat beside the foot-worn grass, feeling by no means so sure as when I had started which of us twain were the better fitted to teach wisdom to the other. 'And what would you do, Valentine, with heaps of money?' I asked. Again for a moment his old shyness of me returned. Perhaps it was not quite a legitimate question from a friend of such recent standing. But his frankness wrestled with his reserve and once more conquered. 'Mama need not do any work then,' he answered. 'She isn't really strong enough for it, you know,' he explained, 'and I'd buy back the big house where she used to live when she was a little girl, and take her back to live in the country--the country air is so much better for her, you know--and Aunt Emma, too.' But I confess that as regards Aunt Emma his tone was not enthusiastic. I spoke to him--less dogmatically than I might have done a few minutes previously, and I trust not discouragingly--of the trials and troubles of the literary career, and of the difficulties and disappointments awaiting the literary aspirant, but my croakings terrified him not. 'Mama says that every work worth doing is difficult,' he replied, 'and that it doesn't matter what career we choose there are difficulties and disappointments to be overcome, and that I must work very hard and say to myself "I _will_ succeed," and then in the end, you know, I shall.' 'Though of course it may be a long time,' he added cheerfully. Only one thing in the slightest daunted him, and that was the weakness of his spelling. 'And I suppose,' he asked, 'you must spell very well indeed to be an author.'