Droozle | Page 3

or we will take away all his writing paper and
reading matter for good!"
"I'd thought of doing that," Jean conceded. "But isn't that a monstrous
way to treat a literary genius?"
"Not at all!" she protested. "By taking on a work that will require more
time than his lifetime, he is defeating himself."
"There's that way of looking at it," agreed the artist. "All right,
Droozle," he called. "You heard us talking and you know we mean it.
No more writing until we reach an agreement--or else!"
Droozle quit writing at once. While the girl and the young artist
watched anxiously, Droozle first wandered about uncertainly for a few
minutes and then curled up on a newspaper and went to sleep.
He slept all evening.
* * * * *
"He has beaten us again," Jean Lanni told Judy Stokes resignedly when
she arrived at his studio the following evening. He watched Droozle
fascinatedly as the snake moved his restless tail over the margins of
newspapers spread on the floor. "He doesn't know yet that I know. I
discovered the fraud only by the merest accident."
"He isn't writing?" she asked, perusing the newspapers for signs of
Droozle's elegant script.

"He most certainly is."
"Where?"
"Look at him!" Jean exclaimed, ignoring her question. "He's doing it
again!"
Droozle had ceased wriggling for the moment and lay there shaking
violently, as though he had malaria. Then the paroxysm passed and he
took up his restless movements again.
"The poor genius," mourned Judy. "He must be sick with frustration."
"Sick, my eye! That snake has learned to centrifuge part of his blood
while it is in his body, so that the hemoglobin is separated out. The
result is--invisible ink!"
"Why, I'll tell that Droozle off!" raved Judy. "Here I sat feeling sorry
for the little crumb!"
Droozle did not mind. While she ranted, he brazenly began writing in
visible ink once more.
"How did you catch him at it?" she asked.
"I used a piece of his newspaper to pick up a hot saw blade. The heat
turned the invisible ink brown."
"Droozle," said the girl passionately, looking down at the writer, "you
know your master is in great need of funds. Where is your sense of
loyalty and self-sacrifice for the one who has cared for you?"
Droozle wrote poetically, "Is there Joy or any other good thing in
Abnegation? Is there Beauty in Sacrifice? What Handsome purpose do
these serve a being in his race with Time? His Days will soon be spent
and they will come no more; thus my Criterion: Is This the most Joy
gathering, Awareness touching, Beauty sensing act of which he is
capable? None other is worthy of his time!"

"Men are not so selfish," objected Jean.
"I am not a man," wrote Droozle simply.
Jean turned staunchly to the girl. "Judy, he has convinced me. I have
been wrong about him. From now on he can write whatever he likes!"
"Good-by to our hopes then?"
"For the present, yes," assented Jean stoically, as he brought fresh
sheets of paper from his desk for Droozle. "My landscapes might begin
to sell after a while," he added without conviction.
"Rotten little crumb," Judy fumed, glaring balefully at the snake. But
Droozle wrote serenely on, his ruby eyes glowing enigmatically.
Jean interposed magnanimously, "I see now that I have been
inexcusably selfish with Droozle. I've kept him cooped up here, not
wanting to bother with him while I was out on my painting trips. True,
he was busy writing. But most of his knowledge of Earth has come
from books; he can't write classics about living things unless he sees
living things."
* * * * *
As she picked up his trend of thought, Judy's face lost its resentful
expression, and something like seraphic righteousness spread over it. "I
see what you mean. Just how did you plan to make up for this shut-in
feeling that poor Droozle must have been suffering so much from for
all these years?"
"Oh, Judy, I'm so glad you asked me!" He threw wide his arms to the
world. "Out into the wind and the rain we shall go, and there I will
draw my pictures while he observes; then into the roaring, brawling
taverns we shall go, where life thrives in all its abundance. I've been
robbing him by shutting him up here."
"Jean, look at Droozle," the girl exclaimed, pointing. "He has stopped

in the middle of a page and is starting on a fresh one."
Droozle wrote, "Please not out into the wind and the rain. Please not
into the roaring, brawling taverns where life thrives in all its abundance.
I loathe shudder and tilt."
"Loathing is no reason to turn away from reality, Droozle," admonished
the artist. "Things