Susan had reached New York late in November, 1913, and the letter to Phil dates from the following January. Barely two months had passed since her first calls upon Maltby and Heywood Sampson, but every day of that period had been made up of crowded hours. Of the three manufactured-in-advance articles for the Garden Ex., Maltby had accepted one, paying thirty dollars for it, half-rate--Susan's first professional earnings; but the manner of his acceptance had convinced Susan it was a mere stroke of personal diplomacy on his part. He did not wish to encourage her as a business associate, for Maltby kept his business activities rigidly separate from what he held to be his life; neither did he wish to offend her. What he wholly desired was to draw her into the immediate circles he frequented as a social being, where he could act as her patron on a scale at once more brilliant and more impressive. So far as the Garden Ex. was concerned, his attitude from the first had been one of sympathetic discouragement. Susan hit off his manner perfectly in an earlier letter: "'My dear Susan! You can write very delicate, distinctive verse, no doubt, and all that--and of course there's a fairly active market for verse nowadays, and I can put you in touch with some little magazines, _à côté_, that print such things, and even occasionally pay for them. They're your field, I'm convinced. But, frankly, I can't see you quite as one of our contributors--and I couldn't pay you a higher compliment! "'You don't suppose, do you, I sit here like an old-fashioned editor, reading voluntary contributions? No, my dear girl; I have a small, well-broken staff of writers, and I tell them what to write. If I find myself, for example, with a lot of parade interiors taken in expensive homes, I select four or five, turn 'em over to Abramovitz, and tell him to do us something on "The More Dignified Dining-Room" or "The Period Salon, a Study in Restfulness." Abramovitz knows exactly what to say, and how to point the snobbish-but-not-too-snobbish captions and feature the best names. I've no need to experiment, you see. I count on Abramovitz. Just so with other matters. Here's an article, now, on "The Flaunting Paeony." Skeat did that, of course. It's signed "Winifred Snow"--all his flower-and-sundial stuff is--and it couldn't be better! I don't even have to read it. "'Well, there you are! I'm simply a purveyor of standardized goods in standardized packages. Dull work, but it pays.' "'Exactly!' I struck in. 'It pays! That's why I'm interested. Sister and Togo and I need the money!'"