“It’s to be called the Small Beer Chronicle,” growled Wagg, “and little Popjoy is to be engaged for the infantine department.”
“It is to be called the Pall Mall Gazette, sir, and we shall be very happy to have you with us,” Shandon said.
“Pall Mall Gazette—why Pall Mall Gazette?” asked Wagg.
“Because the editor was born at Dublin, the sub-editor at Cork, because the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row;—and the paper is published in Catherine Street, Strand. Won’t that reason suffice you, Wagg?” Shandon said; he was getting rather angry. “Everything must have a name. My dog Ponto has got a namee. You’ve got a name, and a name which you deserve, more or less, indeed. Why d’ye grudge the name to our paper?”
“By any other name it would smell as sweet,” said Wagg.
“I’ll have ye remember its name’s not what-d’ye-call-’em, Mr. Wagg,” said Shandon. “You know its name well enough, and—and you know mine.”
“And I know your address too,” said Wagg; but this was spoken in an undertone, and the good-natured Irishman was appeased almost in an instant after his ebullition of spleen, and asked Wagg to drink wine with him in a friendly voice.
When the ladies retired from the table, the talk grew louder still; and presently Wenham, in a courtly speech, proposed that everybody should drink to the health of the new Journal, eulogising highly the talents, wit, and learning of its editor, Captain Shandon. It was his maxim never to lose the support of a newspaper man, and in the course of that evening he went round and saluted every literary gentleman present with a privy compliment specially addressed to him; informing this one how great an impression had been made in Downing Street by his last article, and telling that one how profoundly his good friend, the Duke of So-and-So, had been struck by the ability of the late numbers.
The evening came to a close, and in spite of all the precautions to the contrary, poor Shandon reeled in his walk, and went home to his new lodgings, with his faithful wife by his side, and the cabman on his box jeering at him. Wenham had a chariot of his own, which he put at Popjoy’s seat; and the timid Miss Bunion seeing Mr. Wagg, who was her neighbour, about to depart, insisted upon a seat in his carriage, much to that gentleman’s discomfiture.
Pen and Warrington walked home together in the moonlight. “And now,” Warrington said, “that you have seen the men of letters, tell me, was I far wrong in saying that there are thousands of people in this town, who don’t write books, who are, to the full, as clever and intellectual as people who do?”