Author's Republic sample (enhanced)

Joe was busy writing in the garret because the weather was getting colder. She wrote for a few hours while her pet rat, Ross Grable, and his son played overhead. Joe finished her manuscript, signed it, and read through it with excitement. She tied it up with a red ribbon and looked at it proudly. Joe's desk was an old tin kitchen, where she kept her papers and books. She took another manuscript from the desk and quietly left the garret, leaving her friends to play with her pens and ink. Author's Republic Narrator's Script Excerpt from Little Women by Louisa May Elcott CHAPTER FOURTEEN SECRETS Joe was very busy in the garret, for the October days began to grow chilly, and the afternoons were short. For two or three hours, the sun lay warmly in the high window, showing Joe seated on the old sofa, writing busily with her paper spread out upon a trunk before her. Ross Grable, the pet rat, promenaded the beams overhead, accompanied by his oldest son, a fine young fellow, who was evidently very proud of his whiskers. Absorbed in her work, Joe scrubbed away till the last page was filled. When she signed her name with a flourish and threw down her pen, lying back on the sofa, she read the manuscript carefully, making dashes here and there, and putting in many exclamation points, which looked like little balloons. Then she tied it up with a smart red ribbon, and sat a minute looking at it with a sober, wistful expression, which plainly showed how earnest her work had been. Joe's desk up here was an old tin kitchen, which hung against the wall. In it she kept her papers and a few books, safely shut away from Scrabble, who, being likewise of a literary turn, was found of making a circulating library of such books as were left in his way by eating the leaves. From this tin receptacle Joe produced another manuscript, and putting both in her pocket, crept quietly downstairs, leaving her friends to nibble on her pens and taste her ink.