and delighted her. She had never known any sensation so pleasurable as that sense of adventure with which, each morning, she went to work. First, she patted the manuscript pile, which grew so amazingly fast. Then she filled her fountain pen and looked off over the treetops, beyond her window, until, like Peter Pan, she slipped off into another world, the Land of Make Believe, a country she had discovered for herself and peopled with human beings to suit her own taste. To be sure, her story concerned itself mainly with herself, Jarvis, and the Professor, but only the traits that made them individual, that made them “they,” were selected, and the experiences she took them through were entirely of her own making. It was such fun to make them real by the power of words; to make many people know them and love them, or condemn them, as the case might be. In fact, creation was absorbing.
“It’s very quiet around here since Jarvis left,” commented the Professor a few days later.
“I never thought Jarvis was noisy.”
“Well, he’s like distant thunder.”
“And heat lightning,” laughed Bambi.
“Do you happen to miss him?”
“Me? Oh, not at all. Do you?”
