"Sudden enough," said Condy, "but it IS a great thing for you, Blix, and I'm mighty glad for you. Your future is all cut out for you now. Of course your aunt, if she's so fond of you and hasn't any children, will leave you everything--maybe settle something on you right away; and you'll marry some one of those New York chaps, and be great big people before you know it.""The idea, Condy!" she protested. "No; I'm going there to study medicine. Oh, you don't know how enthusiastic I am over the idea!
I've bought some of the first-year books already, and have been reading them. Really, Condy, they are even better than 'Many Inventions.'""Wish I could get East," muttered Condy gloomily. Blix forgot her own good fortune upon the instant.
"I do so wish you COULD, Condy!" she exclaimed. "You are too good for a Sunday supplement. I know it and YOU know it, and I've heard ever so many people who have read your stories say the same thing.
You could spend twenty years working as you are now, and at the end what would you be? Just an assistant editor of a Sunday supplement, and still in the same place; and worse, you'd come to be contented with that, and think you were only good for that and nothing better. You've got it in you, Condy, to be a great story-teller. I believe in you, and I've every confidence in you. But just so long as you stay here and are willing to do hack work, just so long you will be a hack writer. You must break from it;you MUST get away. I know you have a good time here; but there are so many things better than that and more worth while. You ought to make up your mind to get East, and work for that and nothing else. I know you want to go, but wanting isn't enough.
Enthusiasm without energy isn't enough. You have enthusiasm, Condy; but you MUST have energy. You must be willing to give up things; you must make up your mind that you will go East, and then set your teeth together and do it. Oh, I LOVE a man that can do that--make up his mind to a thing and then put it through!"Condy watched her as she talked, her brown-black eyes coruscating, her cheeks glowing, her small hands curled into round pink fists.
"Blix, you're splendid!" he exclaimed; "you're fine! You could put life into a dead man. You're the kind of girl that are the ****** of men. By Jove, you'd back a man up, wouldn't you? You'd stand by him till the last ditch. Of course," he went on after a pause--"of course I ought to go to New York. But, Blix, suppose I went--well, then what? It isn't as though I had any income of my own, or rich aunt. Suppose I didn't find something to do--and the chances are that I wouldn't for three or four months--what would Ilive on in the meanwhile? 'What would the robin do then, poor thing?' I'm a poor young man, Miss Bessemer, and I've got to eat.
