Mr. Weil's eyes had a twinkle in them.
"Didn't you say, yourself, that it could be done?" he inquired. "If I have made any mistake in my investment, I shall charge the loss to you."
The critic reflected a minute.
"I'm not so certain it can't be done," he said. "But that's quite different from investing money in it, as you are doing. A man wants pretty near a certainty before he puts up the stuff."
"You greedy fellow!" exclaimed Weil. "Will you never think of anything but gain? I have to spend about so much money every year, in a continual attempt to amuse myself, and it might as well be this way as another. I have a document, signed and solemnly sealed, by which I am to back him against the field in the interest of romantic and realistic literature, and in return he is to give me a third of the net profits of his writings. I don't know that I have done so badly. Perhaps you may live to see Cutt & Slashem pay us a handsome sum in royalties."
Mr. Gouger looked oddly at his friend, whose face was perfectly serious.
"What are you going to begin with?" he asked.
"Love, of course. It is the A B C, as well as the X Y Z of the whole business."
"What kind of love?"