d
piano."

"That's it, Billy. And she has done nothing but polish herself, and now
you can see your face in her. Fancy, Billy, what these modern creatures
do. They go to gymnasium. They can take a five-barred gate, I believe,
in their knickerbockers and what they call sneakers. They understand all
about foods and what's good for them and what's good for the aged, and
if you're over seventy they buy condensed foods in cans and make you
take it twice a day."

"You haven't tasted your grog."

"I shan't. Want it?"

He accepted the glass, and sniffed at it critically.

"That's good," he commented. "That's very good. There's a familiar
creature in that." He tasted, and then drank with gusto.

"Well," said the old lady disparagingly, "you wouldn't have said so if
it had been one of the foods. I have them before I go to bed."

He spoke persuasively: "Florrie, let's talk a little more about the
book."

"There's nothing more to say. I've told you the whole story, and I know
you won't tell anybody else."

"Don't you think you'd better make a clean breast of it to Gilbert and
Wall?"

"What for?"

"Well, I don't know exactly: only it seems to me publishers and authors
are in a more or less confidential relation. Being a publisher myself, I
naturally feel rather strongly about it."

"I don't see it in the least," said the old lady decisively. "All this
talk about the paternal relation is mere poppycock. They print me a
book. If it takes a start, they back it. They're as glad as I am. But as
to telling them my glorious little joke, why, I can't and I won't."

"But, dear woman, they're printing away with full confidence in having
got a valuable book out of you."

"So they have. It's selling, isn't it?"

"Madly. Specialists want it for honest data. The general reader has got
an idea from the reviews that there's personal gossip in it, more or
less racy. So it goes."

"Well, let it go," said the old lady recklessly. "I shan't stop it."

"No, but I can't help thinking Gilbert and Wall ought to be in the
secret."

"Do you imagine they'd stop printing?"

"I don't imagine anything. I believe, to speak temperately, they'd drop
dead. I only say it's a fearful and wonderful situation, and they ought
to know it. You see, dear woman, you've not only played a joke on the
public; you've played a joke on them."

"Well, for goodness' sake, why not? What's a publisher, anyway? Has he
got to be treated like a Hindu god? Bill