So writes Sophie Kerr (Mrs. Sophie Kerr Underwood) in response to an appeal for some information about herself that might legitimately gratify the natural curiosity of her readers. Her readers are a multitude! She has had stories in “all the magazines,” so to speak; the statement doesn’t exaggerate much. She hasn’t had a story, so far as we know, in the _New Republic_ but when that Effort decides to take up the publication of short stories doubtless she will! Mrs. Underwood’s short stories need no introduction (to use the sacred formula), and anyway we are here concerned with her as a novelist, and primarily with her as the author of _The Blue Envelope_ and _The Golden Block_. Both these stories are concerned with women in business and there the resemblance pretty nearly stops. _The Blue Envelope_ has for its heroine a young girl (who tells the story) under twenty. Leslie Brennan is pretty, a pretty butterfly, used to nothing but spending money and having a joyous if innocent time. She lives with Mrs. Alexander, a woman of family and breeding and wealth. Her guardian, Uncle Bob, pays her bills. But when Mrs. Alexander is summoned to Maine by illness Leslie goes to live with the Morrisons and meets Randall Heath. Heath makes love to her and the shock when she finds out that he was only after her money makes somewhat easier compliance with the unusual wish of her dead father that she spend two years earning her living. This adventure--earning your living is the greatest adventure in the world and Sophie Kerr can prove it to you!--this enterprise takes Leslie to New York. And there she meets Minnie Lacy who has long earned a living and knows a lot about men’s neckties, being engaged in the business of making them. And there, also, after getting a stenographer’s training and some education in the work of a secretary, Leslie enters the employ of Ewan Kennedy, inventor of explosives. The “blue envelope” doesn’t make its appearance until along toward the end of the story. It contains the formula for a powder which he is going to give to the United States Government--sarnite. The formula must be delivered to the Chief of Ordnance in Washington. Certain persons, agents, presumably, of a foreign government, are bending heaven and earth to get the sarnite formula. They will stop at nothing. And Leslie Brennan has the task of delivering it to the Chief of Ordnance.