marhappen to be very reliable, would want us to straighten them out for her if they weren't; and we should do it. When she asks whether a comma will do or ought it to be a semi-colon? we answer as well as we can. When she wants to know: "have I made it clear what this means?" or "Have I used this word twice too near together?" of course we say how it strikes us. Annoyingly from my Yankee point of view, she insists on a preference for Oxford spelling, undoubtedly met in three out of four of the contemporary books which she reads. Well, then, I point out to her that if going to spell "colour" she, must also spell "favourite" and "storey" and "veranda." But the words themselves, the sentences, are hers, just as truly as is the pattern of the whole; and hers is a really workmanlike care for weeding out gawky constructions and repetitions of the words of which she ins been successively over-fond.
One the great objects of imaginative writing, I take it, is to have joy. Another, not wholly separable from the first, is to learn you go. I like to suppose that Barbara, turned twelve, is having her just share of both.
March, 1926
