"Well--temporarily extinguished. S.K.R., who knows his music-halls,
was offered Smythe's berth. We delicately intimated to him that if he
liked at any time to devote a little paragraph to Miss Poppy Grace, he
was at perfect liberty to do so."

"A liberty he interpreted as poetic licence."

"Nothing of the sort. He absolutely declined the job."

"Why?"

"Well--the marvellous boy informed me that he was too intimate with
the lady to write about her. At any rate with that noble impartiality
which distinguishes the utterances of _The Planet_."

"Steady, man. He _never_ told ye _that_!" said Mackinnon.

"I didn't say he _told_ me, I said he informed me."

"And whar's the differ'nce? I don't see it at all."

"Trepan him, trepan him."

Stables took out his penknife and indicated by dumb show a surgical
operation on Mackinnon's dome-like head.

"I gathered it," continued Maddox suavely, "from his manner. I culled
his young thought like a flower."

"Perhaps," Rankin suggested, "he was afraid of compromising Poppy."