"Is she hurt?"
"Lord bless you," said Jack, "she's dead. When she got over the hedge she grew too proud of herself, and personal vanity was the ruin of her. She took a tremendous spiked gate, and caught it with her hind legs; the spikes kept her fast, the gate swung open, and the poor mare was so disgusted that she broke her heart. She was worth two hundred guineas; so that the Derby this year has cost me a fortune. The stanhope is all to atoms, and the farmer claims compensation for the gate. It's a very lucky thing I thought of the book."
"Oh, you still go on with the novel?"
"It's done, man, finished—perfect."
"All written out?"
"Not a word of it. That isn't the way people write books now; no, I have clipped out half of it with a pair of scissors, and the half is all marked with pencil."
"But the authors will find you out."
"Not a bit of it. No author reads any body's writings but his own; or if they do, I'll deny it—that's all; and the public will only think the poor fellow prodigiously vain, to believe that any one would quote his book. And, besides, here are the reviews?"
"Of the book that isn't published?"
"To be sure. Here are two or three sentences from Macauley's 'Milton,' half a page from Wilson's 'Wordsworth,' and a good lump from Jeffrey's 'Walter Scott.' Between them, they made out my book to be a very fine thing, I assure you. I sha'n't sell it under five hundred pounds."