hat I should write this thing,"
said Clovis, ignoring the bypaths to fame that Bertie van Tahn was
pointing out to him. "You see, Loona Bimberton had a Coronation Ode
accepted by the NEW INFANCY, a paper that has been started with the
idea of making the NEW AGE seem elderly and hidebound. 'So clever of
you, dear Loona,' the Packletide remarked when she had read it; 'of
course, anyone could write a Coronation Ode, but no one else would have
thought of doing it.' Loona protested that these things were extremely
difficult to do, and gave us to understand that they were more or less
the province of a gifted few. Now the Packletide has been rather
decent to me in many ways, a sort of financial ambulance, you know,
that carries you off the field when you're hard hit, which is a
frequent occurrence with me, and I've no use whatever for Loona
Bimberton, so I chipped in and said I could turn out that sort of stuff
by the square yard if I gave my mind to it. Loona said I couldn't, and
we got bets on, and between you and me I think the money's fairly safe.
Of course, one of the conditions of the wager is that the thing has to
be published in something or other, local newspapers barred; but Mrs.
Packletide has endeared herself by many little acts of thoughtfulness
to the editor of the SMOKY CHIMNEY, so if I can hammer out anything at
all approaching the level of the usual Ode output we ought to be all
right. So far I'm getting along so comfortably that I begin to be
afraid that I must be one of the gifted few."

"It's rather late in the day for a Coronation Ode, isn't it?" said
Bertie.

"Of course," said Clovis; "this is going to be a Durbar Recessional,
the sort of thing that you can keep by you for all time if you want to."

"Now I understand your choice of a place to write it in," said Bertie
van Tahn, with the air of one who has suddenly unravelled a hitherto
obscure problem; "you want to get the local temperature."

"I came here to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the
mentally deficient," said Clovis, "but it seems I asked too much of
fate."

Bertie van Tahn prepared to use his towel as a weapon of precision, but
reflecting that he had a good deal of unprotected coast-line himself,
and that Clovis was equipped with a fountain-pen as well as a towel, he
relapsed pacifically into the depths of his chair.

"May one hear extracts from the immortal work?" he asked. "I promise
that nothing that I hear now sha