lightening her fair face as she looked at him.

"How funny!" she cried. "You fight your way through the New Guinea
forests; you are in daily peril of your life; you open up a new country,
and yet you are not a made man until you are attacked by a wretched
newspaper."

"That is the standpoint of the people who sell books, so you may depend
upon its being the standpoint of the people who buy books," said he.

"I can quite believe it," said she. "Mr. Geraint, the novelist, took me
down to dinner at Mrs. Lemuel's last night, and he told me that the only
thing that will make people buy books is seeing the author's portrait in
some of the illustrated papers, or hearing from some of the interviews
which are published regarding him that he never could take sugar in his
coffee. The reviews of his books are read only by his brother authors,
and they never buy a book, Mr. Geraint says; but the interviews are read
by the genuine buyers."

"Mr. Geraint knows his public, I'm sure."

"I fancy he does. He would be very amusing if he didn't aim so
persistently at going one better than someone else in his anecdotes.
People were talking at dinner about your having massacred the natives
with dynamite--you did, you know, Mr. Courtland."

"Oh, yes; I have admitted so much long ago. There was no help for it."

"Well, of course everyone was laughing when papa told how the massacre
came about, and this annoyed Mr. Geraint and induced him to tell a story
about a poor woman who fancied that melinite was a sort of food for
children that caused their portraits to appear in the advertisements; so
she bought a tin of it and gave it all to her little boy at one meal. It
so happened, however, that he became restless during the night and fell
out of his cradle. That happened a year ago, Mr. Geraint said, and yet
the street isn't quite ready for traffic yet."

"That little anecdote of Mr. Geraint makes me feel very meek. If at any
time I am tempted to think with pride upon my dynamite massacre, I shall
remember Mr. Geraint's story, and hang my head."

"We were all amused at Mr. Geraint's lively imagination, but much more
so when Mr. Topham, the under-secretary, shook his head gravely,
and said in his most dignified manner, that he thought the reported
occurrence--the melinite incident--quite improbable. He was going on
to explain that the composition of the explosive differed so materially
from that of the food that it would be almost impossibl