"On the mischief!" said I.
"He didn't happen to tell you that he considered you the finest, subtlest, truest, and so forth of all the living so forths, did he?"
"He may have said something out of the fulness of an overladen heart. You know how unbridled is the enthusiasm of——"
"Young gentlemen who buy your books with their last farthing. You didn't soak it all in by any chance, give him a good meal and half a sovereign as well, did you?"
"I own up," I said. "I did all that and more. But how do you know?"
"Because he victimised me in the same way a fortnight ago."
"Thank you for that," I said, "but I burned his disgusting manuscripts. And he wept."
"There, unless he keeps a duplicate, you have scored one."
But considering the matter impartially, it seems to me that the game is not more than "fifteen all" in any light.