"
"Four or five!" we said enthusiastically. "Make it ten!
And have you any plan for work beyond that?"
"Oh, yes indeed," laughed the Lady Novelist. "I am always
planning ahead. What I want to do after that is a study
of the inside of a penitentiary."
"Of the _inside_?" we said, with a shudder.
"Yes. To do it, of course, I shall go to jail for two or
three years!"
"But how can you get in?" we asked, thrilled at the quiet
determination of the frail woman before us.
"I shall demand it as a right," she answered quietly. "I
shall go to the authorities, at the head of a band of
enthusiastic women, and demand that I shall be sent to
jail. Surely after the work I have done, that much is
coming to me."
"It certainly is," we said warmly.
We rose to go.
Both the novelists shook hands with us with great
cordiality. Mr. Afterthought walked as far as the front
door with us and showed us a short cut past the beehives
that could take us directly through the bull pasture to
the main road.
We walked away in the gathering darkness of evening very
quietly. We made up our mind as we went that novel writing
is not for us. We must reach the penitentiary in some
other way.
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