“So that was how I got my start.” True enough, for the real start comes in the impulse, doesn’t it? After that has been felt intervals hardly matter.... _Cross Currents_ was successful and Mrs. Porter was persuaded to write a sequel, _The Turn of the Tide_. She had developed a habit, now fixed, of clipping from newspapers and magazines bits of news, comments, whatnot, that were significant to her. These she filed, filed and card indexed. One day she saw in some magazine four lines expressing wonder as to what would happen, if feminine influence came into the home life of three bachelors. From those four lines, or rather, from the idea in them, came _Miss Billy_; and from _Miss Billy_ came _Miss Billy’s Decision_ and _Miss Billy--Married_. Not immediately; Mrs. Porter filed the clipping. She thought vaguely that perhaps, maybe, some day, she would write a short story--only a short story--based on the idea in this sentence or so.... _Pollyanna_-- So many think of Mrs. Porter only as the author of _Pollyanna_--they are not her real readers who know better!--that it is much fairer to her and ourselves to consider her other books. After the Pollyanna stories came _Just David_, easily accounted for. Mrs. Porter says that her thoughts had often played around the idea of a child brought up to know only what is good. You shudder, or laugh. Good heavens, don’t you wish that _you_ could have been spared some of the things you were brought up to know? At the bottom of your acquired attitude is there no faint wistfulness, no trace of longing for something once loved and lost--not awhile but forever? David is the only son of a violinist. After his mother’s death the father carries the boy to a cabin in the mountains. Six years afterward he is brought to a quiet country town--a lad in love with music, with birds and flowers. “Mr. and Mrs. Holly, more than ever now, were learning to look at the world through David’s eyes. One day--one wonderful day--they went to walk in the woods with the boy; and whenever before had Simon Holly left his work for so frivolous a thing as to walk in the woods! “It was not accomplished without a struggle, as David could have told. All the morning David urged and begged. If for once, just once, they would leave everything and come, they would not regret it, he was sure. But they shook their heads and said, ‘No, no, impossible.’ In the afternoon the pies were done and the potatoes dug and David urged and pleaded again. And to please the boy they went. “It was a curious walk. Ellen Holly trod softly with timid feet. She threw hurried, frightened glances from side to side. It was plain that Ellen Holly did not know how to play. Simon Holly stalked at her elbow, stern, silent and preoccupied. It was plain that Simon Holly not only did not know how to play, but did not care to find out.