"Hold on, Mr. Austin," said I. "I don't wish to be rude, but I am not authorized to pay you seven dollars apiece for such words as these you are uttering. If you have any explanations to offer the public for condescending to let me peep at you while at work, you must do it at your own expense."
A shade of disappointment passed over his delicate features.
"There's a hundred guineas gone at a stroke," he muttered, and for an instant I feared that I was to receive my congé. By a strong effort of the will, however, the laureate pulled himself together.
"If that's the case, O Yankee fair,
Suppose we hasten up the stair,
Where every day the Muses call,
And waste no words here in the hall,"
said he. And then he added, courteously: "I am sorry the elevator isn't running. It's one of these English elevators, you know."
"Indeed?" said I. "And what is the peculiarity of an English elevator?"
"Like Britons 'neath the foeman's serried guns,
The British elevator never runs,
For like the brain of the Scottish Thane,
The Thane, you know, of Cawdor,
Our lifts are always out of order,"
he explained. "It's very annoying, too, particularly when you have to carry poems up and down stairs."
"You should let your poems do their own walking, Mr. Austin," said I.