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Page 10
"Oh, well; I keep on trying. I'm twenty-three and I haven't
achieved anything much yet; but I certainly don't feel like
sitting back and calling myself a failure."
Ashe made a grimace.
"All right," he said. "I've got it."
"I meant you to," said Joan placidly. "I hope I haven't bored you
with my autobiography, Mr. Marson. I'm not setting myself up as a
shining example; but I do like action and hate stagnation."
"You are absolutely wonderful!" said Ashe. "You are a human
correspondence course in efficiency, one of the ones you see
advertised in the back pages of the magazines, beginning, 'Young
man, are you earning enough?' with a picture showing the dead
beat gazing wistfully at the boss' chair. You would galvanize a
jellyfish."
"If I have really stimulated you-----"
"I think that was another slam," said Ashe pensively. "Well, I
deserve it. Yes, you have stimulated me. I feel like a new man.
It's queer that you should have come to me right on top of
everything else. I don't remember when I have felt so restless
and discontented as this morning."
"It's the Spring."
"I suppose it is. I feel like doing something big and
adventurous."
"Well, do it then. You have a Morning Post on the table. Have you
read it yet?"
"I glanced at it."
"But you haven't read the advertisement pages? Read them. They
may contain just the opening you want."
"Well, I'll do it; but my experience of advertisement pages is
that they are monopolized by philanthropists who want to lend you
any sum from ten to a hundred thousand pounds on your note of
hand only. However, I will scan them."
Joan rose and held out her hand.
"Good-by, Mr. Marson. You've got your detective story to write,
and I have to think out something with a duke in it by to-night;
so I must be going." She smiled. "We have traveled a good way
from the point where we started, but I may as well go back to it
before I leave you. I'm sorry I laughed at you this morning."
Ashe clasped her hand in a fervent grip.
"I'm not. Come and laugh at me whenever you feel like it. I like
being laughed at. Why, when I started my morning exercises, half
of London used to come and roll about the sidewalks in
convulsions. I'm not an attraction any longer and it makes me
feel lonesome. There are twenty-nine of those Larsen Exercises
and you saw only part of the first. You have done so much for me
that if I can be of any use to you, in helping you to greet the
day with a smile, I shall be only too proud. Exercise Six is a
sure-fire mirth-provoker; I'll start with it to-morrow morning. I
can also recommend Exercise Eleven--a scream! Don't miss it."
"Very well. Well, good-by for the present."
"Good-by."
She was gone; and Ashe, thrilling with new emotions, stared at
the door which had closed behind her. He felt as though he had
been wakened from sleep by a powerful electric shock.
Close beside the sheet of paper on which he had inscribed the now
luminous and suggestive title of his new Gridley Quayle story lay
the Morning Post, the advertisement columns of which he had
promised her to explore. The least he could do was to begin at
once.
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