"You mean—this?" I asked, with a casual hand-wave about that Gramercy Square abode of mine.
"No, sir," was Pip's prompt retort. "I mean those stories of yours. I've read 'em all."
I blushed at this, blushed openly. For such commendation from a man who knew life as it was, who knew life in the raw, was as honey to my ears.
"Do you mean to say you could get them, up there?" I asked, more for something to dissemble my embarrassment than to acquire actual information.
"Yes," acknowledged Pip with a rather foolish-sounding laugh, "they come through the mails about the same as they'd come through the mails down here. And folks even read them, now and then, when the gun-smoke blows out of the valley!"
"Then what struck you as wonderful about them?" I inquired, a little at sea as to his line of thought.
"It's not them that's wonderful, Witter. It's you. I said you were a wonder. And you are."
"And why am I a wonder?" I asked, with the drip of the honey no longer embarrassing my modesty.
"Witter, you're a wonder to get away with it!" was Pip's solemnly intoned reply.
"To get away with it?" I repeated.