"I don't know whether I can do it," he said. "A man has got to know how to write."
"You wrote some remarkable things for the Nestor," said the colonel, now hesitating. It had been one of the rules he and the girls had concocted for the treatment of a returning prisoner, never to refer to stone walls and iron bars. But surely, he felt, Jeff needed encouragement.
Jeff was ruthless.
"That was all rot," he said.
"What was?" Lydia darted at him. "Didn't you mean what you said?"
"It was idiotic for the papers to take it up," said Jeff. "They got it all wrong. 'There's a man,' they said, 'in the Federal Prison, Jeffrey Blake, the defaulter. Very talented. Has revolutionised the Nestor, the prison organ. Let him out, pardon him, simply because he can write.'"
"As I understand," said his father, "you did get the name of the paper changed."
"Well, now," said Jeff, appealingly, in a candid way, "what kind of name was that for a prison paper? Nestor! 'Who was Nestor?' says the man that's been held up in the midst of his wine-swilling and money-getting. Wise old man, he remembers. First-class preacher. Turn on the tap and he'll give you a maxim. 'Gee!' says he, 'I don't want advice. I know how I got here, and if I ever get out, I'll see to it I don't get in again.'"
Lydia found this talk exceedingly diverting. She disapproved of it. She had wanted Jeff to appear a dashing, large-eyed, entirely innocent young man, his mouth, full of axioms, prepared to be the stay of Farvie's gentle years. But this rude torrent of perverse philosophy bore her along and she liked it, particularly because she felt she should presently contradict and show how much better she knew herself. Anne, too, evidently had an unlawful interest in it, and wanted him to keep on talking. She took that transparent way of furthering the flow by asking a question she could answer herself.
"You called it Prison Talk, didn't you?"