Bingo reported three days later that Rosie M. Banks was the goods and
beyond a question the stuff to give the troops. Old Little had jibbed
somewhat at first at the proposed change of literary diet, he not being
much of a lad for fiction and having stuck hitherto exclusively to the
heavier monthly reviews; but Bingo had got chapter one of "All for
Love" past his guard before he knew what was happening, and after that
there was nothing to it. Since then they had finished "A Red, Red
Summer Rose," "Madcap Myrtle" and "Only a Factory Girl," and were
halfway through "The Courtship of Lord Strathmorlick."

Bingo told me all this in a husky voice over an egg beaten up in
sherry. The only blot on the thing from his point of view was that it
wasn't doing a bit of good to the old vocal cords, which were beginning
to show signs of cracking under the strain. He had been looking his
symptoms up in a medical dictionary, and he thought he had got
"clergyman's throat." But against this you had to set the fact that he
was making an undoubted hit in the right quarter, and also that after
the evening's reading he always stayed on to dinner; and, from what he
told me, the dinners turned out by old Little's cook had to be tasted
to be believed. There were tears in the old blighter's eyes as he got
on the subject of the clear soup. I suppose to a fellow who for weeks
had been tackling macaroons and limado it must have been like Heaven.

Old Little wasn't able to give any practical assistance at these
banquets, but Bingo said that he came to the table and had his whack of
arrowroot, and sniffed the dishes, and told stories of _entrees_ he had
had in the past, and sketched out scenarios of what he was going to do
to the bill of fare in the future, when the doctor put him in shape; so
I suppose he enjoyed himself, too, in a way. Anyhow, things seemed to
be buzzing along quite satisfactorily, and Bingo said he had got an