"If it's a question of more money--"

"Perish the thought!" cried Fitzgerald, clasping his knees and rocking
gently. "You know as well as I do, Hewitt, that it's the game and not
the cash. I've found a new love, my boy."

"Double harness?" with real anxiety. Hewitt bit his scrubby mustache.
When a special correspondent married that was the end of him.

"There you go again!" warned the recalcitrant. "If you don't stop
eating that mustache you'll have stomach trouble that no Scotch whisky
will ever cure. The whole thing is in a nutshell," a sly humor
creeping into his eyes. "I am tired of writing ephemeral things. I
want to write something that will last."

"Write your epitaph, Jack," drawled a deep voice from the reading
table. "That's the only sure way, and even that is no good if your
marble is spongy."

"Oh, Cathewe, this is not your funeral," retorted the editor.

"Perhaps not. All the same, I'll be chief mourner if Jack takes up
novel writing. Critics don't like novels, because any one can write an
average story; but it takes a genius to turn out first-class magazine
copy. Anyhow, art becomes less and less particular every day. The
only thing that never gains or loses is this _London Times_. Someday
I'm going to match the _Congressional Record_ and the _Times_ for the
heavyweight championship of the world, with seven to one on the
_Record_, to weigh in at the ringside."