'Hard work, authorship!' exclaimed Sponge, as he finished writing, and threw down the pen.
'Oh, I don't know,' replied Jack, adding, 'I could go on for an hour.'
'Ah, you!—that's all very well,' replied Sponge, 'for you, squatting comfortably in your arm-chair: but consider me, toiling with my pen, bothered with the writing, and craning at the spelling.'
'Never mind, we've done it,' replied Jack, adding, 'Puff'll be as pleased as Punch. We've polished him off uncommon. That's just the sort of account to tickle the beggar. He'll go riding about the country, showing it to everybody, and wondering who wrote it.'
'And what shall we send it to?—the Sporting Magazine, or what?' asked Sponge.
'Sporting Magazine!—no,' replied Jack; 'wouldn't be out till next year—quick's the word in these railway times. Send it to a newspaper—Bell's Life, or one of the Swillingford papers. Either of them would be glad to put it in.'
'I hope they'll be able to read it,' observed Sponge, looking at the blotched and scrawled manuscript.
'Trust them for that,' replied Jack, adding, 'If there's any word that bothers them, they've nothing to do but look in the dictionary—these folks all have dictionaries, wonderful fellows for spellin'.'
Just then a little buttony page, in green and gold, came in to ask if there were any letters for the post; and our friends hastily made up their packet, directing it to the editor of the Swillingford 'guide to glory and freeman's friend'; words that in the hurried style of Mr. Sponge's penmanship looked very like 'guide to grog, and freeman's friend.'