I said yes, but asked him if he had not found it a little difficult to get into.
"Possibly," he said, "possibly. But what a reward!"
"You like books all in long conversations?" I asked.
"I love Dash," he said, "anyway."
"Did you read every word?" I asked.
"Well, not perhaps every word," he replied, "but I got the sense of every page. I read like that, you know—synthetically."
"Yes, of course," I said.
The next day I changed the two library books that were finished for two more, but it was Dash which I took up first. There is no doubt about its being a very remarkable book, but I had had a rather heavy day and my brain was not at its best. What extraordinary novels people do write nowadays! Fancy making a whole book, as the author of Hot Maraschino has done, out of the Elberfeldt talking horses! In this book, which has an excellent murder in a stable in it, the criminal is given away by a horse who tells her master (it is a mare) what she saw. I couldn't lay the story down.
That night I dined out and heard more about Dash. In fact, I myself started one long conversation on that topic with an idle lady who really had read every word. I went on to recommend it right and left. "You must read Dash," I said at intervals; "it's extraordinarily good."
"Some one was telling me he couldn't get on with it at all," said one of my partners.