the heroine was svelte, I am sorry to say, and had red-gold hair and a soft, trainante voice—and the hero was a “frank-looking young Englishman, with a bronzed face and honest blue eyes.” The plot was that with which I firmly believe every career of fiction begins—the girl who throws over her lover because he has jilted her friend. Then she finds out that it was not her lover, but his brother or cousin. We have all written this story in our time, and Kitty wrote it much worse than many, but not nearly so badly as most of us.
And the Girls’ Very Own Friend accepted the story and printed it, and in its columns notified to “George Thompson” that the price, a whole guinea, was lying idle at the office till he should send his address. For, of course, Kitty had taken a man’s name for her pen-name, and almost equally, of course, had called herself “George.” George Sand began it, and it is a fashion which young authors seem quite unable to keep themselves from following.
Kitty longed to tell some one of her success—to ask admiration and advice; but Aunt Eliza was more severe and less approachable than usual that week. She was busy writing
