holiday meal I had prepared was quite ready. There were some things to be grateful for: each other, the comfortable two rooms, and the typewriter. The hamburger steak was all set, the gravy made, and the potatoes with their jackets on, à la California camp style, were a-steaming. The little five-cent baker's pie was warming in the oven and the pint bottle of beer was cooling in the snow on the window ledge. And some one all mine was coming.
We sat down to dinner. Couldn't put the plates on the table right side up these days, it seemed. Had no recollection of having turned my plate over. Turned it right side up again.
I wished people wouldn't be silly. I supposed this was a verse about Christmas. But why the mystery? Wonderingly, I opened the folded slip of paper. Funny looking poetry. Funny look on D's face. What was this anyhow? Looked like an old-fashioned rent receipt. But it didn't say "Received from ." "t said "Pay to ," "Pay to the order of David W. Griffith seven hundred dollars," and it was signed "James K. Hackett."
"Oh no, you haven't sold the play!"
Yes, it was sold; the check represented a little advance royalty. And were the play a success we would receive a stipulated percentage of the weekly gross. (I've forgotten the scale.)
Oh, kind and generous Mr. Hackett!
Isn't it funny how calm one can be in the big moments of life? But I couldn't grasp it. Christmas eve and all! An honest-to-God check on an honest-to-God bank for seven hundred whole dollars. Was there that much money in the whole world?
Now came wonderful days—no financial worry and no
