“If you are going to write a novel, Jack” (I have been plain Jack since she married Charley), “why don’t you write one and be done with it?”
“How many times must I tell you that I am not writing a novel, but a philosophico-bushwhackerian monograph on the theme—”
“Bushwhackerian fiddlestick!” cried Alice, impatiently, but unable to suppress a smile at the rolling thunder of my title. “You may write your monograph, as you call it, but who would read it?”
It was during this discussion that Alice agreed to edit the love-passages that illumine these pages. But what love-passages? After much debate we effected a compromise. If she would engage to spare the reader all save a mere allusion to the heart-pangs of the jovial Jones, she should have full liberty to revel through whole chapters in the loves of the Don. “As for your little affair with Charley,” I added, “I agree to dress that up myself.”
“Indeed, indeed, Jack, if you were to put Mr. Frobisher and myself in your book—and—and—make him—”
“Make him—” (Here I smiled.)
“You know, you villain!”
“Stammer forth praises of your loveliness?”
“You dare!”
And so we are reduced to a single pair of lovers: the Don and—