"Reserve your thanks. I'm not going to finance a slacker, which you are at present, but a hard-working literary man, which you will be when I have done with you. I will give you a room here on the strict conditions that you keep early hours five days a week."

"Yes."

"That you give up bridge."

"Yes."

"And fooling after girls."

"Yes."

"And this day set out and find a plot for a good, honest, payable piece of fiction, novel length. I'm not going to let you off with short-story writing."

"Yes."

"I know a good publisher, and I will assure you that the thing shall be published in the best form, that I will back the advertising and pushing—see? And I will promise you that, however the thing turns out, you shall have two hundred pounds. You will get all profits if it is a success, understand me?"