"You are an ass, you know," as if they were paying the highest of
compliments--as, indeed, they probably imagined that they were. All
this was magnificent, but it was not business. Dunstable and Linton
felt that the whole attitude of the public towards the new enterprise
was wrong. Locksley seemed to regard the Trust as a huge joke, and its
prospectus as a literary _jeu d'esprit_.

In fact, it looked very much as if--from a purely commercial point of
view--the great Lines Supplying Trust was going to be what is known in
theatrical circles as a frost.

For two whole days the public refused to bite, and Dunstable and
Linton, turning over the stacks of lines in their studies, thought
gloomily that this world is no place for original enterprise.

Then things began to move.

It was quite an accident that started them. Jackson, of Dexter's, was
teaing with Linton, and, as was his habit, was giving him a condensed
history of his life since he last saw him. In the course of this he
touched on a small encounter with M. Gaudinois which had occurred that
afternoon.

"So I got two pages of 'Quatre-Vingt Treize' to write," he concluded,
"for doing practically nothing."

All Jackson's impositions, according to him, were given him for doing
practically nothing. Now and then he got them for doing literally
nothing--when he ought to have been doing form-work.