When they came, however, to putting Augusta's plans into actual operation Jimmie had his misgivings. He knew himself. And he knew that, with all of his ready tongue and his genial effrontery in talking himself into and out of a situation, he was at bottom shy and diffident. He had never been able to do good, sincere work with anybody watching him. He had always loved to hug and hide his work until it was actually in print. He had never in his life been guilty of reading or even showing a manuscript to a friend. And he was shy now, even of Augusta's quick sympathy and understanding. What was worse, he found that his mind was sluggish and lazy. After the months, in which he had thought only of rest and sleep and the feeding of his body, he found it almost impossible to spur his mind up to the point of nervous tension where he could create with any sequence. The fires of his brain were banked and choked with the accumulations which the greedy body was piling up for itself. He felt stupid, and yet he found that he could not even get irritated with himself over the fact. To please Augusta, he kept on trying, for he knew how she must have set her heart on this plan of hers and he would have given everything that was in him to make it a success. Never in his life had he tried so hard and so consciously to write good lines. But the good lines would not come, even though he sat for hours dictating painfully and slowly while Augusta wrote. He knew that the work was not good, but he would say nothing, secretly hoping that she would soon tire of the drudgery and let him get at the machine, as he was now hungry to do, in his own way. Augusta did not tire. But in the end she pronounced fatal judgment. One day in the middle of a long paragraph she dropped her hands from the keyboard and looked Jimmie squarely in the eye. "Nothing but the truth, Jimmie," she demanded, "do I get in your way? This is not your good work." "Had you noticed?" said Jimmie dryly. "It is not bad," Augusta explained, springing loyally to the defence of anything that Jimmie had done. "For anybody else it would be perfectly all right. But it isn't just you, Jimmie. It's not just alive, you see. It's--It's--" "Wooden," said Jimmie shortly and without stress. Much as she hated to, Augusta let the criticism stand. She threw the cover over the machine without a word. That was the end of a dream which Augusta had been hugging to her heart for months. Now Augusta, as we know, was a high hearted, high handed little lady, and she always knew that her way was right. Remembering this, we may arrive at some idea of what it cost her to drop, without a whimper, even as she dropped the cover over the machine, her dearest, deepest laid little plan, and to say blithely: "Come on for a run around the lake! Tomorrow you can have a pad and pencil and sit on the back of your neck with your feet up in the window and scribble your own way." Wardwell knew the cost of it.