* * * *

"DASH."

"There's no book like it," said A. "Get it at once."

"You must read _Dash_," said B.

"If you take my advice," said C., "and you know I'm not easily pleased
by modern fiction, you'll get _Dash_ and simply peg away till you've
finished it. It's marvellous."

"I suppose you've read Darnock's _Dash_?" said D. "It's by far his best
thing."

At dinner my partner on each side gurglingly wished to know how I liked
_Dash_, taking it for granted that I knew it more or less by heart.

So having read some of Darnock's earlier work and thought it good, I
acquired a copy of _Dash_ and settled down to it.

I had not read more than two pages when it occurred to me that I ought
to know what the other books in the library parcel were; so I went to
look at them. One was a series of episodes in the career of a wonderful
blind policeman who, in spite of his infirmity, performed prodigies of
tact on point duty, and by the time I had finished glancing through this
it was bed-time. I put _Dash_ under my arm, for I always read for
half-an-hour or so in bed. How it happened I cannot imagine, but when I
picked up the book and began to read I found, much to my surprise, that
it was the other library novel.

"Have you begun _Dash_ yet?" B. asked me at lunch.

"Oh, yes, rather," I said.

"I envy you," he replied. "How far have you got?"

"Not very far yet," I said.

"It's fine, isn't it?" he remarked.

"Fine."

The next evening I had just taken up _Dash_ again when I remembered that
that other novel must be finished if it was to be changed on the morrow,
so I turned dutifully to that instead. It was a capital story about a
criminal who murdered people in an absolutely undetectable way by
lending them a poisoned pencil which would not mark until the point was
moistened. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The next evening I was getting on famously with the fifth page of _Dash_
when the library parcel again arrived, containing two new books for
those I had returned in the morning.

Meeting C. the next day he asked me if I did not think _Dash_ the finest
thing I had ever read.

I said yes, but asked him if he had not found it a little difficult to
get into.

"Possibly," he said, "possibly. But what a reward!"

"You like books all in long conversations?" I asked.

"I love _Dash_," he said, "anyway."

"Did you read every word?" I asked.

"Well, not perhaps every word," he replied, "but I got th