“What is it owing to, Netherby? I’m such a beastly poor liar. You’ve been on the press so much longer. Hustle your vivid imagination and chuck us an excuse.”
Netherby Gomme shook his head:
“I am only a humorist, Oliver—humour must walk knee-deep in truth. I do not travel on Romance——”
“Oh, shut up!... No good chucking the idiot roughly.... It’s beastly long.... We’ll chuck it for length, eh?”
Netherby Gomme smiled at him:
“Noll,” said he, “you are possessed of the magnificent carelessness of the gods—and I never interfere with religious bodies.”
Noll turned to his writing again, and there was a steady scratching of pen on paper.
Netherby Gomme sat for awhile, his face seamed with comic lines of grim amusement:
“I suppose,” he said at last—“I suppose we have read the poem, Oliver?”
“No, I haven’t. But you can.”