"What's the joke?" he asked. "I want something to make me laugh!"
"This wouldn't," replied Edmund Stubbs. "It's not benign enough for you."
"It's only a piece of smart scribbling," explained Llewellyn, lighting a fresh cigarette with the stump of the last.
Jack was behind them; quite innocently he put his head between theirs and looked for himself. The paper was the Parthenon. There was but one article on the open page. It was headed—
Our Minor Poets.
XXVIII. Mr. Claude Lafont.
"So that amuses you?" said Jack at last.
"Quite," said Llewellyn.
"You think it just, eh?"
"Oh, hang justice! It's awfully nice copy. That's all it has any right to be. Justice doesn't matter a hang; the Parthenon's not written for the virtuous shopkeeper; it isn't meant to appeal to the Nonconformist Conscience."