"I can't help it. It sticks out--you've thought of it yourself. Do you think it is a foolish pride?" "Not foolish!" she answered quickly. "And not just pride, I think. It's hard to realize that good work isn't always enough." "Then you don't think me--temperamental?" "I think you are--honest. But after all, there's no real dishonesty if you do good work. And I think"--there was a sudden return to her old shyness--"I think, if you win out, your great reward will be the good work you have done." "How do you know that?" "If it weren't true you wouldn't have made those sketches." And he knew a quick stirring of gratitude that he had found this girl who understood so well, who saw the verities as he saw them and had neither laugh nor sneer nor impatience for his finickiness. "I wish," she went on, "it could come to you as you want it. But I am glad it is coming--even though some one does pull wires to bring it to you." "But the wires may not work. I've got to remember that others may not see my work as you and he do." "That is possible," she said. "What of that?" "I can try again, you mean? I suppose I can do that. I think I will do that, as I can. And probably, if I turn out work that's worth while, some day my chance will come. If I don't--why, there are other things to do, and if you put your heart into them you can get happiness out of them. Do you mind if I plagiarize a bit?" "I don't mind at all," she smiled. "And I've got to remember that, win or lose, I owe a lot to you and him. He doesn't understand what a quitter I was when I came to his office. I'd turned sour. I thought, because things hadn't gone the way I wanted, I'd been hardly used." "I know how that feels," she said. "The truth was--" Moonlight loosens tongues that by day are tied fast. "The truth was, I'd had the best luck in the world. I'd met him--and you. You went out of your way to make things pleasant for me, a stranger. And by just being yourselves you shamed me into looking at things from your point of view. It's a very good point of view. I'd rather have it now, I think, than build all the churches in Christendom." The moonlight revealed the friendliness in her eyes. He could not fight down a new thrilling faith in his gift, in himself, in his strength to stand straight though he should fail again. "You'd have found it by yourself," she said. "If you'd really been a quitter, if it hadn't been in you, you couldn't have found it, even through him. But I know how you feel. I feel the same way toward him. _Isn't_ he the dear, funny little man?" And that opened a fertile and profitable field. Jonathan's ears must have burned a long while that night. CHAPTER VIII CERTAIN PLOTS Three good fairies had their heads together. One was an astute banker with a mouth delinquent borrowers hated to see, one was a woman who was known to be wise and one was a dinky little man with red whiskers.