"Come," said Val to Emmie, clutching for diversion at their one common interest, "we'll do the magazine." Emmie got the red and black ink, the fine and the broad nibbed pens, a pile of paper oddments tied with string, and a gigantic ledger, with one of its massive calf-skin covers torn off, revealing the pages, blank at this end, coarse like drawing-paper, and tough, like nothing one sees in these flimsy times--a fabric that, besides never wearing out, had been found to take kindly to the refinements of ornamental printing. The girls established themselves in the dining-room. After executing the title of Emmie's story in florid Old English lettering, Val did a pen-and-ink sketch of the hero. That gallant individual had started out rather like Harry Wilbur. In this final issue he appeared with Ethan Gano's marked and clear-cut profile, having borrowed from that gentleman not only his tall elegance, but the slight droop of the shoulders and the even more elusive characteristic by means of which, despite the occasional droop, he never lost the air of carrying himself well in some indefinable way. "Now," said Val, bestowing a finishing touch. Whereupon, with much gusto, Emmie began to read the last instalment of "The Brown House on the Hill," Val printing at dictation in a rapid, clear italic. The minutes flew. Venus would be coming in presently to set the dinner-table. The clock, chiming the hour, masked the sound of footsteps approaching from the opposite direction. Emmie raised her voice to be heard by the printer above the dozen strokes of noon: "Ever--and--anon--Archibald--Abalone--murmured--in--Editha's--ear:-- 'Angel--I--adore--thee.'" "What nonsense is that you are reading?" said Mrs. Gano, in the sudden silence. The two girls started like criminals. Not only was their grandmother standing at the door, but cousin Ethan was looking in at their discomfiture over her shoulder. Val obscured the _Comet_ with the blotter. Emmie, grown very pink, had thrust Editha and Archibald Abalone under the table. "What is it you have there, Emmeline?" "Just a--just a thing I was reading Val." "Let me see it." "No, grandma, please." "Let me see it." She came towering into the room. "Grandma," said Val, turning at bay, "it isn't _meant_ for you." "Emmeline, hand me that paper." Trembling, the younger girl brought up the manuscript. "It isn't honorable to read things that aren't meant for you," said Val, starting up and displacing the blotter. "_Read_ it!" Mrs. Gano caught "The Brown House" out of the child's hands with strange excitement, and tore it across and across. "Oh, oh!" wailed Emmie, with fast-flowing tears, while Val and Ethan stood transfixed. There was "the magazine" in full sight, flaunting on its cover a splashing red comet with a fiery tail. Mrs. Gano blazed back at it through her glasses as she threw down the fragments of "The Brown House."