Janet walked every other week to the post-office at New Dalry to post
her letters to the editor, but neither the great man nor yet the
senior office boy had any conception that the verses of their "esteemed
correspondent" were written by a woman too early old who dwelt alone at
the back of Barbrax Long Wood.
One day Janet took a sudden but long-meditated journey. She went down
by rail from the little station of The Huts to the large town of Drum,
thirty miles to the east. Here, with the most perfect courage and
dignity of bearing, she interviewed a printer and arranged for the
publication of her poems in their own original form, no longer staled
and clapper-clawed by the pencil of the senior office boy. When the
proof-sheets came to Janet, she had no way of indicating the corrections
but by again writing the whole poem out in a neat print hand on the edge
of the proof, and underscoring the words which were to be altered. This,
when you think of it, is a very good way, when the happiest part of your
life is to be spent in such concrete pleasures of hope, as Janet's were
over the crackly sheets of the printer of Drum.
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