Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/167

but they, too, moved to a secret creative refrain. There were times when Janet lay watching the lamplight on the rows of books, and little pictures of stories that she would like to write flashed into her head. They often used to come to her at inopportune periods during the day, when the Urchin was in his bath or when she was taking stock of the ice-box. Of course her husband was the literary man of the family, and she had no thought of setting up her simple imaginings against his more serious efforts. But one night, when he was engrossed in some intractable plot, Janet slipped away into the little guest room and shut herself in. With a stub pencil, on odd sheets of notepaper, she began scribbling hotly. Two hours later, when Hemming came back to earth and hunted her out, she was still at it.

"What on earth are you up to, monk?" he asked.

"Making out laundry lists," she said.

More observant husbands might have wondered what occasion there would be for a laundry list on Thursday evening, but Hemming was always drowned in his dreams of literary fame.

His story, on which he had laboured at night for two months, and hers, which had taken the spare hours of three days, were finished almost at the same time. After dinner one night, when he had