“There’s no vice in
A bit of dicin’ ...”
but never ends. “For,” said Major Cypress, “it needs genius to finish a poem like that, and I’m frightfully afraid I’ve only got talent.” And then he would give that funny, gurgling little chuckle of his, a deep “cluck, cluck, cluck.” Hugo Cypress was a very useful man in a battle or a house-party; sometimes he would get drunk before a battle, “just to appal the enemy,” and sometimes at a house-party, “just to amuse your guests,” he would explain to his hostess, who generally adored Hugo, the last of the beaux sabreurs. He was an uncommonly agreeable companion for any man or woman—or for a man and woman.
Virginia and her three remaining guests dined very pleasantly; and Johnny remarked how glad he was that they hadn’t gone to that “beastly Monte Carlo, where they shoot pigeons all day and pluck them all night.”
“Give me home,” said Johnny, “a little conversation, and a nice-glass-of-wine....”
The conversation, however, was not very “little.” For Lois, his wife, had charge of it, and Lois had a reputation to keep up. Lois’s conversation—which, people and papers said, was witty—consisted in asking rather sharp questions about a given subject, listening impatiently to your replies, and then saying that that wasn’t what she had meant and asking another question, beginning: “But don’t you think, now....” To-night she was talking, or rather asking witty questions about, publishing. Mr. Worth Butterthorn, the publisher, had recently offered her five thousand pounds for her memoirs, and so Lois was rather interested in publishing; so had Mr. Worth Butterthorn been, when Lois had capped his offer by saying that she would be charmed to write her memoirs for him or any one else for seven thousand pounds; and Mr. Butterthorn was thinking about that, probably at that very moment. Lois was clever about money....
They discussed publishing. Ivor was naturally expected to know something about it, but didn’t. And as for Johnny, he of course never knew anything about anything, let alone publishing.
“Who pays who?” he asked. “And why?” (The silliest part of Johnny’s silly questions was that no one could ever answer them.)
“What I want to know is,” Lois dangerously put to the table, “if, say, 30,000 copies of my memoirs are sold at 18s. 6d. per memoir, and if my royalty is, say, 22 per cent. per cost price per memoir, will I make more or less than by selling my rights outright to Mr. Butterthorn for £7000?”
“What about,” Johnny suggested, “a nice little monograph instead, on Artists I Have Sat To, Off and On?”
Virginia was then delivered of an idea.