"I've a message for you, Dale," he said. "The Mayor has been here."
"And what may the Mayor want?"
"The Mayor came as an ambassador. He bore a resolution from the Town Council, a unanimous resolution (absente Johnstone owing to pressure in the bookselling trade), begging you to accede to the Lord Lieutenant's request and write a poem for the Duke."
"Hang the Town Council!" exclaimed Dale. "I wonder why nobody will let me alone!"
Then he remembered that Miss Delane had been almost ostentatious in her determination to let him alone. If he wrote, they could not say that he had written to please her. But he was not going to write. True, it would have been a good revenge on the Doctor, and it would have pleased——
"Shall you do the ode?" asked Philip Hume.
"Certainly not," answered Dale in a resolute tone.