From "Cheerful -- By Request" The editor paid for the lunch (as editors do). He lighted his seventh cigarette and leaned back. The conversation, which had zigzagged from the war to Zuloaga, and from Rasputin the Monk to the number of miles a Darrow would go on a gallon, narrowed down to the thin, straight line of business.

"Now don't misunderstand. Please! We're not presuming to dictate. Dear me, no! We have always felt that the writer should be free to express that which is in his -- ah -- heart. But in the last year we've been swamped with these drab, realistic stories. Strong, relentless things, you know, about dishwashers, with a lot of fine detail about the fuzz of grease on the rim of the pan. And then those drear and hopeless ones about fallen sisters who end it all in the East River. The East River must be choked up with 'em. Now, I know that life is real, life is earnest, and I'm not demanding a happy ending, exactly. But if you could -- that is -- would you -- do you see your way at all clear to giving us a fairly cheerful story? Not necessarily Glad, but not so darned Russian, if you get me. Not pink, but not all grey either. Say -- mauve. . . ."

That was Josie Fifer's existence. Mostly grey, with a dash of pink. Which makes mauve. . . .

*

Also included in this volume are "The Gay Old Dog," "The Tough Guy," "The Eldest," "That's Marriage," "The Woman Who Tried to Be Good," "The Girl Who Went Right," "The Hooker-Up-the-Back," "The Guiding Miss Gowd," "Sophy-as-She-Might-Have-Been," "The Three of Them," and "Shore Leave."