"You never can tell," he grinned, "I
might." Then, quite suddenly, he stood up, knocked the ash out of
his pipe, and came over to Mary Louise, who was preparing to
descend the steep little flight of stairs.
"Look here, Mary Louise Moss, from Escanaba, Michigan, you
stop trying to write the slop you're writing now. Stop it. Drop
the love tales that are like the stuff that everybody else writes.
Stop trying to write about New York. You don't know anything about
it. Listen. You get back to work, and write about Mrs. Next Door,
and the hair-washing, and the vegetable garden, and bees, and the
back yard, understand? You write the way you talked to me, and
then you send your stuff in to Cecil Reeves."
"Reeves!" mocked Mary Louise. "Cecil Reeves, of The Earth?
He wouldn't dream of looking at my stuff. And anyway, it really
isn't your affair." And began to descend the stairs.
"Well, you know you brought me up here, kicking with your
heels, and singing at the top of your voice. I couldn't work. So
it's really your fault." Then, just as Mary Louise had almost
disappeared down the stairway he put his last astonishing question.
"How often do you wash your hair?" he demanded.
"Well, back home," confessed Mary Louise, "every six weeks or
so was enough, but----"
"Not here," put in the rude young man, briskly.
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