Upstairs there’s a bright little room where she works. Couch in one corner, built-in bookcase in another, big desk in the middle. The desk is heaped with piles of closely-written paper and books. On the soft buff paper of the walls are paintings, drawings, photographs--the originals of illustrations to Mrs. Comstock’s books are noticeable. Here she writes most of each novel, subjected to endless interruptions--friends and neighbors of a novelist never take the novelist’s work seriously. When the finishing chapters are to be done Mrs. Comstock packs manuscript, pencils and paper and goes away. Her publishers and her husband have the address--no one else. She is one of the extremely few novelists who do not use a typewriter--she writes it all out longhand and makes several copies before she gets through. She began by writing stories for the school paper, she continued by writing children’s stories, then books for older girls and boys. _Janet of the Dunes_ was her first novel. Thomas Hardy is her favorite author. “Whenever I feel that I am stranded I read Hardy and regain my poise. He discusses so clearly and nobly the problems with which we are struggling to-day. And I also like Barrie; principally, I think, because he knows women so thoroughly, and I always know he knows. Stevenson once said of George Eliot that when she wrote of men they always put their hands up to feel if their hair is coming down; but Barrie writes of women without their appearing with a cigar in their hands.” Of her method of work Mrs. Comstock says: “The first thing I see is the place and the people--the background and the actors. Then their story begins to unfold in my mind. When the time comes that that story must be written before I can have any peace of mind, I sit down to it--not before. Other writers, I understand, usually see the story or the people first, and the background later. With me, the background, the environment of my characters, is all-important. Why, I even keep a set of pictures of the country I am writing of on my desk beside me.”