“At least Aunt Grace believes in the D.A.R. part of the Darwin theory,” was another of Katherine Deal’s airy quips.

On this visit of Abbie’s to Margaret, she found the latter just finishing a canvas with final loving touches.

“What do you think, Mother?” Margaret, in her studio smock, stood back to watch her mother’s face.

Abbie came a step nearer to get the best vision. For some time she stood and looked at the unframed scene standing on the easel. When she turned, her wrinkled face was aglow. “You’ve got it, Margaret. It’s there at last, . . . the light lying in little pools on the prairie. You’ve caught it . . . just as you said you wanted to.”

“Yes, I believe I’ve caught it. But think, Mother, I’ve been trying for thirty years to get it as I wanted it. What was the matter with me before?”

“I don’t know, dear. I guess it’s always that way. There’s no short-cut to anything. The Master demands full time of us before we are paid.”

For some reason little Laura Deal continued to be Abbie’s favorite grandchild. The little girl answered Abbie’s deep love for her with an affection equally sincere,—or perhaps, it was the other way. Perhaps the fact that Laura held such admiration for her grandmother enkindled its answer in Abbie’s heart. From the time Laura was five she had brought her grandmother little stories of her own composition. Abbie had them all in safe keeping, just as she had everything else which had ever come into her possession.

One of the first of these literary achievements, laboriously printed, was:

“A man once on a time had a poket-buk ful of munny he lost the munny and too this day he has to worck.”

“Laura has the right idea,” Abbie told the relatives in high glee. “She has the whole philosophy of life summed up in a short story. She’ll be a writer some day.”

At eight, she had brought her grandmother more lengthy compositions, running largely to an atmosphere of delectable foods, and over which the whole clan surreptitiously laughed: “ ‘Oh, no,’ said the young lady, as she nibbled daintily at a piece of chocolate pie with whipped cream on it and a cherry on top of that and a nut on top of that.”

At eleven, Laura had discovered what romance meant, and her writing leaned conspicuously toward that direction. Abbie was sitting on a bench under the cedars on a mild spring afternoon when Laura came out of the house bearing the inevitable pencil and notebook.

“Listen here, Grandma. Here’s my new one. It’s called ‘My Dream of Imagination.’:

“I was once a princess, a captive in castle grim

And a dragon wanted to drag me to come and live with him.

Now I had violet eyes and long yellow gleaming hair

And people said I was beautiful with my pure white skin so fair.”

Abbie listened with undiminished interest to the twenty-six verses of dramatic, not to say gory, suspense, through: