After some deliberation, he decided to take a step, which he would never have taken, had Mercy not been going away from his influence,—­a step which he had again and again said to himself he would hot risk, lest the effect might be to hinder her intellectual growth.  He sent two of her poems to a friend of his, who was the editor of one of the leading magazines in the country.  The welcome they met exceeded even his anticipations.  By the very next mail, he received a note from his friend, enclosing a check, which to Harley Allen’s inexperience of such matters seemed disproportionately large.  “Your little Cape Cod girl is a wonder, indeed,” wrote the editor.  “If she can keep on writing such verse as this, she will make a name for herself.  Send us some more:  we’ll pay her well for it.”

Mr. Allen was perplexed.  He had not once thought of the verses being paid for.  He had thought that to see her poems in print might give Mercy a new incentive to work, might rouse in her an ambition, which would in part take the place of the stimulus which his teachings had given her.  He very much disliked to tell her what he had done, and to give to her the money she had unwittingly earned.  He feared that she would resent it; he feared that she would be too elated by it; he feared a dozen different things in as many minutes, as he sat turning the check over and over in his hands.  But his fears were all unfounded.  Mercy had too genuine an artistic nature to be elated, too much simplicity to be offended.  Her first emotion was one of incredulity; her second, of unaffected and humble wonder that any verses of hers should have been so well spoken of; and her next, of childlike glee at the possibility of her earning any money.  She had not a trace of the false pride which had crystallized in her mother’s nature into such a barrier against the idea of a paid industry.

“O Mr. Allen!” she exclaimed, “is it really possible?  Do you think the verses were really worth it?  Are you quite sure the editor did not send the money because the verses were written by a friend of yours?”

Harley Allen laughed.

“Editors are not at all likely, Mercy,” he said, “to pay any more for things than the things are worth.  I think you will some day laugh heartily, as you look back upon the misgivings with which you received the first money earned by your pen.  If you will only work faithfully and painstakingly, you can do work which will be much better paid than this.”

Mercy’s eyes flashed.

“Oh! oh!  Then I can have books and pictures, and take journeys,” she said in a tone of such ecstasy that Mr. Allen was surprised.

“Why, Mercy,” he replied, “I did not know you were such a discontented girl.  Have you always longed for all these things?”