"Oh, no," said Patrick, "I don't suppose you have. I expect you know lots of things that good classical scholars are utterly ignorant of. You can read and play music at sight, I'm sure?"
Ben admitted it.
"I knew you could. I call that the most miraculous thing in the world—putting one's fingers down on the notes accurately without any practice whatever. I'm sure Porson couldn't do that, even if he did drink ink. Jack can do it too, confound him! It's the one accomplishment I have always longed for, and I could never even whistle. But the 'Sortes Virgilianæ'—that was a game of chance and an appeal for guidance—every copy of Virgil an oracle, you know. It was like this. You were in a hole. Very well, you opened your Virgil at random and you took the first words that caught your eye as an inspired message. But nowadays people don't confine themselves to Virgil: they take any book. Let's try it. What is your perplexity at the moment?"
"Well," said Ben, "I suppose it would have something to do with getting clients, being able to be of any use to them when I did get them, and being able to pay you your rent."
"We'll try," said Patrick, taking a book at random from the shelf behind him, without turning round, and opening it. He looked at the page and laughed. "There you are," he said, pointing to the passage.
The book was "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám" and the page was that on which was the quatrain containing the line:—
So take the cash and let the credit go.
"But there isn't any cash to take," said Ben.
"No," said Patrick, "but how does it go on?