“It sure is,” replied Ronicky Doone instantly.  “Not a bit of a doubt about it.”

“It starts you doubting things,” went on Gregg bitterly, “and pretty soon you’re even doubting yourself.”  Here he cast an envious glance at the smooth brow of his companion.  “But I guess that never happened to you, Ronicky?”

“You’d be surprised if I told you,” said Ronicky.

“Well,” went on Bill Gregg, “I got so darned tired of my own thoughts and of myself that I decided something had ought to be done; something to give me new things to think about.  So I sat down and went over the whole deal.

“I had to get new ideas.  Then I thought of what a gent had told me once.  He’d got pretty interested in mining and figured he wanted to know all about how the fancy things was done.  So he sent off to some correspondence schools.  Well, they’re a great bunch.  They say:  ’Write us a lot of letters and ask us your questions.  Before you’re through you’ll know something you want to know.’  See?”

“I see.”

“I didn’t have anything special I wanted to learn except how to use myself for company when I got tired of solitaire.  So I sat down and wrote to this here correspondence school and says:  ’I want to do something interesting.  How d’you figure that I had better begin?’ And what d’you think they answered back?”

“I dunno,” said Ronicky, his interest steadily increasing.

“Well, sir, the first thing they wrote back was:  ’We have your letter and think that in the first place you had better learn how to write.’  That was a queer answer, wasn’t it?”

“It sure was.”  Ronicky swallowed a smile.

“Every time I looked at that letter it sure made me plumb mad.  And I looked at it a hundred times a day and come near tearing it up every time.  But I didn’t,” continued Bill.

“Why not?”

“Because it was a woman that wrote it.  I told by the hand, after a while!”

“A woman?  Go on, Bill.  This story sure sounds different from most.”

“It ain’t even started to get different yet,” said Bill gloomily.  “Well, that letter made me so plumb mad that I sat down and wrote everything I could think of that a gent would say to a girl to let her know what I thought about her.  And what d’you think happened?”

“She wrote you back the prettiest letter you ever seen,” suggested Ronicky, “saying as how she’d never meant to make you mad and that if you—­”

“Say,” broke in Bill Gregg, “did I show that letter to you?”

“Nope; I just was guessing at what a lot of women would do.  You see?”

“No, I don’t.  I could never figure them as close as that.  Anyway that’s the thing she done, right enough.  She writes me a letter that was smooth as oil and suggests that I go on with a composition course to learn how to write.”

“Going to have you do books, Bill?”

“I ain’t a plumb fool, Ronicky.  But I thought it wouldn’t do me no harm to unlimber my pen and fire out a few words a day.  So I done it.  I started writing what they told me to write about, the things that was around me, with a lot of lessons about how you can’t use the same word twice on one page, and how terrible bad it is to use too many passive verbs.”