" Maybe I encouraged him too much, for, one
night, he called on me, his eyes flaming with excitement, and said
breathlessly:
"Do you mind--can you let me stay here and write all this evening? I won't
interrupt you, I won't really. There's no place for me to write in at my
mother's."
"What's the trouble?" I said, knowing well what that trouble was.
"I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was
ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's such a notion!"
There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked me,
but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched without
stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching grew slower,
there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest story in the world
would not come forth.
"It looks such awful rot now" he said, mournfully. "And yet it seemed so good
when I was thinking about it. What's wrong?"
I could not dishearten him by saying the truth. So I answered: "Perhaps you
don't feel in the mood for writing."
"Yes I do--except when I look at this stuff. Ugh!"
"Read me what you've done," I said. He read, and it was wondrous bad and he
paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for
he was proud of those sentences, as I knew he would be.
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