got crimson, as if you were rubbing more and
more crimson lake on a palette. But he didn't say a word, so Oswald had
to say--

'I should jolly well think so.'

So the Editor gave Noel a sovereign and a shilling, and he shook hands
with us both, but he thumped Noel on the back and said--

'Buck up, old man! It's your first guinea, but it won't be your last.
Now go along home, and in about ten years you can bring me some more
poetry. Not before--see? I'm just taking this poetry of yours because I
like it very much; but we don't put poetry in this paper at all. I shall
have to put it in another paper I know of.'

'What _do_ you put in your paper?' I asked, for Father always takes the
Daily Chronicle, and I didn't know what the Recorder was like. We chose
it because it has such a glorious office, and a clock outside lighted
up.

'Oh, news,' said he, 'and dull articles, and things about Celebrities.
If you know any Celebrities, now?'

Noel asked him what Celebrities were.

'Oh, the Queen and the Princes, and people with titles, and people who
write, or sing, or act--or do something clever or wicked.'

'I don't know anybody wicked,' said Oswald, wishing he had known Dick
Turpin, or Claude Duval, so as to be able to tell the Editor things
about them. 'But I know some one with a title--Lord Tottenham.'

'The mad old Protectionist, eh? How did you come to know him?'

'We don't know him to speak to. But he goes over the Heath every day at
three, and he strides along like a giant--with a black cloak like Lord
Tennyson's flying behind him, and he talks to himself like one o'clock.'

'What does he say?' The Editor had sat down again, and he was fiddling
with a blue pencil.

'We only heard him once, close enough to understand, and then he said,
"The curse of the country, sir--ruin and desolation!" And then he went
striding along again, hitting at the furze-bushes as if they were the
heads of his enemies.'

'Excellent descriptive touch,' said the Editor. 'Well, go on.'

'That's all I know about him, except that he stops in the middle of the
Heath every day, and he looks all round to see if there's any one about,
and if there isn't, he takes his collar off.'

The Editor interrupted--which is considered rude--and said--

'You're not romancing?'

'I beg your pardon?' said Oswald. 'Drawing the long bow, I mean,' said
the Editor.

Oswald drew himself up, and said he wasn't a liar.

The Editor only laughed, and said