exultation. "Oh, you--you are good."
Sarah Drew spoke as with difficulty.

"No adjective, my dear, was ever applied with less discrimination. It
is merely that you have rendered no inconsiderable service to
posterity, and merit a reward."

"Oh, and indeed, indeed, I was always fond of you----" The girl sobbed
this.

She would have added more, no doubt, since compassion is garrulous, had
not Pope's scratched hand dismissed a display of emotion as not
entirely in consonance with the rules of the game.

"My dear, therein you have signally honored me. There remains only to
offer you my appreciation of your benevolence toward a sickly monster,
and to entreat for my late intrusion--however unintentional--that
forgiveness which you would not deny, I think, to any other impertinent
insect."

"Oh, but we have no words to thank you, sir----!" Thus Hughes began.

"Then don't attempt it, my good fellow. For phrase-spinning, as I can
assure you, is the most profitless of all pursuits." Whereupon Pope
bowed low, wheeled, walked away. Yes, he was wounded past sufferance;
it seemed to him he must die of it. Life was a farce, and Destiny an
overseer who hiccoughed mandates. Well, all that even Destiny could
find to gloat over, he reflected, was the tranquil figure of a smallish
gentleman switching at the grass-blades with his cane as he sauntered
under darkening skies.

For a storm was coming on, and the first big drops of it were
splattering the terrace when Mr. Pope entered Lord Harcourt's mansion.

Pope went straight to his own rooms. As he came in there was a vivid
flash of lightning, followed instantaneously by a crashing, splitting
noise, like that of universes ripped asunder. He did not honor the
high uproar with attention. This dwarf was not afraid of anything
except the commission of an error in taste.

Then, too, there were letters for him, laid ready on the writing-table.
Nothing of much importance he found there.--Here, though, was a rather
diverting letter from Eustace Budgell, that poor fool, abjectly
thanking Mr. Pope for his advice concerning how best to answer the
atrocious calumnies on Budgell then appearing in _The Grub-Street
Journal_,--and reposing, drolly enough, next the proof-sheets of an
anonymous letter Pope had prepared for the forthcoming issue of that
publication, wherein he sprightlily told how Budgell had poisoned Dr.
Tindal, after forging his will. For even if Budgell had not in