“I wish I knew what to suggest,” Rattray returned; “but we might talk it over with her—­when she’s had time to take off her bonnet.”

Ten minutes later Elfrida was laughing at their ambitions.  “A success?” she exclaimed.  “Oh yes!  I mean to have a success—­one day!  But not yet—­oh no!  First I must learn to write a line decently, then a paragraph, then a page.  I must wait, oh, a very long time—­ten years perhaps.  Five, anyway.”

“Oh, if you do that,” protested Golightly Ticke, “it will be like decanted champagne.  A success at nineteen—­”

“Twenty-one,” corrected Elfrida.

“Twenty-one if you like—­is a sparkling success.  A success at thirty-one is—­well, it lacks the accompaniments.”

“You are a great deal too exacting, Miss Bell,” Rattray put in; “those things you do for us are charming, you know they are.”

“You are very good to say so.  I’m afraid they’re only frivolous scraps.”

“My opinion is this,” Rattray went on sturdily.  “You only want material.  Nobody can make bricks without straw—­to sell—­and very few people can evolve books out of the air that any publisher will look at it.  You get material for your scraps, and you treat it unconventionally, so the scraps supply a demand.  It’s a demand that’s increasing every day—­for fresh, unconventional matter.  Your ability to treat the scraps proves your ability to do more sustained work if you could find it.  Get the material for a book, and I’ll guarantee you’ll do it well.”

Elfrida looked from one to the other with bright eyes.  “What do you suggest?” she said, with a nervous little laugh.  She had forgotten that she meant to wait ten years.

“That’s precisely the difficulty,” said Golightly, running his fingers through his hair.

“We must get hold of something,” said Rattray.  “You’ve never thought of doing a novel?”

Elfrida shook her head decidedly.  “Not now,” she said.  “I would not dare.  I haven’t looked at life long enough—­I’ve had hardly any experience at all.  I couldn’t conceive a single character with any force or completeness.  And then for a novel one wants a leading idea—­the plot, of course, is of no particular consequence.  Rather I should say plots have merged into leading ideas; and I have none.”

“Oh, distinctly!” observed Mr. Ticke finely.  “A plot is as vulgar at this end of the century as a—­as a dress improver, to take a feminine simile.”

Rattray looked seriously uncomprehending, and slowly scratched the back of his hand.  “Couldn’t you find a leading idea in some of the modern movements,” he asked —­“in the higher education of women, for instance, or the suffrage agitation?”

“Or University Extension, or Bimetallism, or Eight Hours’ Labor, or Disestablishment!” Elfrida laughed.  “No, Mr. Rattray, I don’t think I could.

“I might do some essays,” she suggested.

Rattray, tilting his chair back, with his forefingers in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, pursed his lips “We couldn’t get them read,” he said.  “It takes a well-established reputation to carry essays.  People will stand them from a Lang or a Stevenson or that ’Obiter Dicta’ fellow—­not from an unknown young lady.”