“How? You have!”
“I’ve written a book,” he said.
Baddlesmere whistled:
“The devil you have!... Ah, Gomme, everybody writes books nowadays.”
“But they read mine, sir,” said Netherby Gomme. He dived his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and, taking out a bundle of press-cuttings, drew a much-thumbed one from the others. “Listen to the mighty Thrumsby Burrage in The Discriminator, sir.” He read out the paragraph:
“We have here a refined humorist, whose work is stamped with the hall-mark of genius.”
Baddlesmere nodded; he was only half listening.
“Oh yes,” said he—“hall-mark of genius is Thrumsby Burrage.”
Gomme went on with a yawning travesty of the pulpit manner:
“In the present day it is indeed a veritable intellectual treat to come upon the subtle workmanship of a man of large experience of life—workmanship marked by that delicate wit which grows only to perfection in the cloistered atmosphere of scholarship.”