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Constance, and kissed Allison's cheek. “Isn't this a morning!”
    â€œThis morning I am masquerading as a short-order cook,” said Mike, as Allison put her cheek up. “One egg or two?”
    â€œTwo!” cried Allison, suddenly overwhelmed with love and a wonderful certainty that today was going to be a marvelous day.
    â€œIt's going to happen today!” she cried, and almost danced over to the stove to pour herself a cup of coffee.
    â€œOh, darling, I hope so,” said Constance. “Did you dream that it would?”
    â€œNo, but I know it just the same,” said Allison, and sat down at the kitchen table. “Today Bradley Holmes is going to call me from New York. ‘Hello, Allison,’ he will say. And I'll say, ‘Hello, Brad.’ And then he'll say, ‘I have wonderful news for you. I've sold your book.’ Then if I don't faint I'll start to cry, and he'll tell me to whom he's sold it and you, Mother, will have to call Mike because I'll never be able to do it, and when Mike comes home he'll break down and get two bottles of that champagne he's been saving and we'll all celebrate.”
    Mike assumed a pose with his coffee cup raised and said, “And I'll stand like this and say, ‘Here's to Allison MacKenzie and her best seller Samuel's Castle. ’ And then, ladies, we shall all proceed to tie one on.”
    â€œAnd then,” said Constance, “I'll have to get busy and call up everyone we know and say, ‘Please come over to our house because we are having a party for the celebrated authoress Allison MacKenzie,’ and then Mike will have to start serving beer because we don't have that much champagne in the cellar.”
    â€œDamn it,” cried Mike, “now the eggs are burning!” And all three of them laughed.
    Allison sighed. “Brought back to earth by burning eggs. How prosaic.” But she preferred the dream, and said, “Wouldn't it be wonderful if Brad did sell it?”
    â€œYes, it would, darling,” said Constance. “It would make us all so happy, and you especially. You deserve it, darling. Not just because you have a wonderful talent, but because you've worked so hard.”
    â€œIt'll happen,” said Mike. “One day soon, mark my words. Now come on, let's eat. I'll be late for school.”
    Worked so hard, Allison thought. It was an accurate description, yet it did not begin to express all that she had put into her novel. The years of writing and the drudgery of rewriting. What made it so hard was not, after all, the book itself, but doubt. Doubt haunted her, plucked at her nerves, kept her from sleep and rest. Would it be any good? Would it find a publisher? She could never trust her own judgment. The chapter that read so well at midnight would appear in the light of day as fit only for the wastebasket. It was a book she had cried over—as much, she sometimes thought, as any mother ever cried over an ungrateful child.
    Samuel's Castle was the culmination of over two years of work for Allison. When she had first returned home at the time of Selena Cross's trial, she had come in defeat as a writer; for, although she had managed to support herself with what she earned as a short story writer for the magazines, her novel had been a failure. Bradley Holmes had told her flatly that he could not sell her book, and that, even if he could, he would not do so. The publication of an inferior work would do her more harm than good in the long run, he had told her.
    â€œTry the novel again,” Brad said. “Wait until you're older, more experienced.”
    Well, Allison had thought ruefully when she got home, she was certainly more experienced if not much older.
    David Noyes, whom she had met in New York, was the only person to whom she had ever told the whole story of her brief affair with Bradley Holmes, and it was David who came to Peyton Place to help and comfort her.
    â€œI won't say it