"Exactly—bet, will you?"
"Done," I said; "and now explain."
"I will, if we get round this corner; but it is very sharp. Bravo, mare! And now we've a mile of level Macadam. I go to a circulating library and order home forty novels—any novels that are sleeping on the shelf. That is a hundred and twenty volumes—or perhaps, making allowance for the five-volume tales of former days, a hundred and fifty volumes altogether. From each of these novels I select one chapter and a half, that makes sixty chapters, which, at twenty chapters to each volume, makes a very good-sized novel."
"But there will be no connexion."
"Not much," replied Jack, "but an amazing degree of variety."
"But the names?"
"Must all be altered—the only trouble I take. There must be a countess and two daughters, let them be the Countess of Lorrington and the Ladies Alice and Matilda—a hero, Lord Berville, originally Mr Lawleigh—and every thing else in the same manner. All castles are to be Lorrington Castle—all the villains are to be Sir Stratford Manvers'—all the flirts Lady Emily Trecothicks'—and all the benevolent Christians, recluses, uncles, guardians, and benefactors—Mr Percy Wyndford, the younger son of an earl's younger son, very rich, and getting on for sixty-five."
"But nobody will print such wholesale plagiarisms."
"Won't they? See what Colburn publishes, and Bentley, and all of them. Why, they're all made up things—extracts from old newspapers, or histories of processions or lord-mayor's shows. What's that coming down the hill?"
"Two coaches abreast"—I exclaimed—"racing by Jupiter!—and not an inch left for us to pass!"