"What is it?" cried Drummond, flinging the paper down in a sort of
final fury.

"What is it?" replied Grant, his voice rising into a kind of
splendid chant. "What is it? It is a great new profession. A great
new trade. A trifle immoral, I admit, but still great, like
piracy."

"A new profession!" said the young man with the red moustache
vaguely; "a new trade!"

"A new trade," repeated Grant, with a strange exultation, "a new
profession! What a pity it is immoral."

"But what the deuce is it?" cried Drummond and I in a breath of
blasphemy.

"It is," said Grant calmly, "the great new trade of the Organizer
of Repartee. This fat old gentleman lying on the ground strikes
you, as I have no doubt, as very stupid and very rich. Let me clear
his character. He is, like ourselves, very clever and very poor. He
is also not really at all fat; all that is stuffing. He is not
particularly old, and his name is not Cholmondeliegh. He is a
swindler, and a swindler of a perfectly delightful and novel kind.
He hires himself out at dinner-parties to lead up to other people's
repartees. According to a preconcerted scheme (which you may find
on that piece of paper), he says the stupid things he has arranged
for himself, and his client says the clever things arranged for
him. In short, he allows himself to be scored off for a guinea a