"Oh, the whole book! My book set up in print?"
"Yes. And if I were you, I would send an announcement of the work by the next mail to your Australian friends. Say that your discovery has at length assumed its final shape, and is now ripe for publication, after being laid before all the learned societies of London; and that it has been accepted by Messrs. ——, the well-known publishers, and will be issued almost as soon as this announcement reaches Melbourne. Here is a slip that I have prepared for you."
He took it with glittering, eyes and stammering voice. The news seemed too good to be true.
"Now, Mr. Fagg, that this has been settled, there is another thing which I should like to propose for your consideration. Did you ever hear of that great Roman who saved his country in a time of peril, and then went back to the plough?"
Daniel shook his head.
"Is there any Hebrew inscription about him?" he asked.
"Not that I know of. What I mean is this: When your volume is sent, Mr. Fagg—when you have sent it triumphantly to all the learned societies and all your subscribers, and all the papers and everywhere (including your Australian friends), because the publisher will let you have as many copies as you please—would it not be a graceful thing, and a thing for future historians to remember, that you left England at the moment of your greatest fame, and went back to Australia to take up—your old occupation?"
Daniel never had considered the thing in this light, and showed no enthusiasm at the proposal.
"When your friends in Victoria prophesied fortune and fame, Mr. Fagg, they spoke out of their hopes and their pride in you. Of course, I do not know much about these things. How should I? Yet I am quite certain that it takes a long time for a learned discovery to make its way. There are jealousies—you have experienced them—and unwillingness to admit new things. You have met with that, too; and reluctance to unlearn old things. Why, you have met with that as well."
"I have," he said, "I have."