"Yes," said the other, "that is what I mean."

"The question is whether 'The Maiden Knight' fellow does it," said Kenby,
taking duck and pease from the steward at his shoulder.

"What my wife likes in it is to see what one woman can do and be
single-handed," said March.

"No," his wife corrected him, "what a man thinks she can."

"I suppose," said Mr. Triscoe, unexpectedly, "that we're like the English
in our habit of going off about a book like a train of powder."

"If you'll say a row of bricks," March assented, "I'll agree with you.
It's certainly Anglo-Saxon to fall over one another as we do, when we get
going. It would be interesting to know just how much liking there is in
the popularity of a given book."

"It's like the run of a song, isn't it?" Kenby suggested. "You can't
stand either, when it reaches a given point."

He spoke to March and ignored Triscoe, who had hitherto ignored the rest
of the table.

"It's very curious," March said. "The book or the song catches a mood, or
feeds a craving, and when one passes or the other is glutted--"

"The discouraging part is," Triscoe put in, still limiting himself to the
Marches, "that it's never a question of real taste. The things that go