“A text a day
Drives care away.”
“It wouldn’t drive my sort of care away,” said Stewart. “Mine’s serious.”
“There can be no trouble too serious for you to find consolation in this calendar.”
“But suppose I have toothache on quarter-day, and the consolation you offer for that date is consolation to a man who can’t pay his rent? Seriously, Branstone, am I behind the scenes in this office, or do you never drop the showman? I admit you’re in the pi-market, and you’ve dressed the pi-man’s part and you’ve got his patter, too, but I don’t know that you need exercise it on me. This stock of yours looks dire,” he commented, strolling round the office. “I suppose it’s the stuff that sells?”
“My business,” said Sam, “is founded on a rock.”
“I came in here to sell you a fortune,” said Stewart. “If you’re going to talk cant at me, I’ll take the fortune to a London publisher. Your business may be founded on a rock, but the name of the rock is the ‘Social Evil.’”
“The word rock,” said Sam, with a twinkle in his eye, “is also used for a kind of toffee.”
“Well, now that I know you’re sane, I’ll talk to you. And I’ll talk toffee, too I didn’t think in the days of my earnest youth that I should come to this, but you never know what debt will do to a man. I’ve written a novel. At least, it isn’t a novel, it’s an outrage on decency. It’s a violent assault on the emotions. It’s the sort of thing I deserve shooting for writing. Treacle is bitter compared with it, and it does not contain one word of literature. It is a cast-iron certainty.”
“I must read it,” said Sam.