read it."

Archie Weil uttered another of his winsome laughs.

"How would you like to be a serpent," he asked, "and have your flesh
creep all the time? But before we dismiss this matter of Miss Fern, I
want you to clear your mind, if you can, of the haunting suspicions you
always have when a woman is concerned. You know there are concerns in
the city who would print her book, with a proper amount paid down, if it
had neither sense, syntax nor orthography. If she wants it fixed up, I
can find tailors to help her out; and if her papa wants it on the
market, why shouldn't he be able to get it there? Now, let us talk a
little about Roseleaf."

Mr. Gouger brightened at the change of subject. His interest in Mr.
Roseleaf was genuine, and he had already learned that Archie had formed
a sort of copartnership with the novelist, in the hope of making his
future work a success. While the critic could not be said to have any
real faith in the arrangement, it certainly interested him.

"What strange freak will you take to next?" he asked. "And do you really
expect to make a novelist out of that young man?"

Mr. Weil's eyes had a twinkle in them.

"Didn't you say, yourself, that it could be done?" he inquired. "If I
have made any mistake in my investment, I shall charge the loss to you."

The critic reflected a minute.

"I'm not so certain it _can't_ be done," he said. "But that's quite
different from investing money in it, as you are doing. A man wants
pretty near a certainty before he puts up the stuff."

"You greedy fellow!" exclaimed Weil. "Will you never think of anything
but gain? I have to spend about so much money every year, in a continual
attempt to amuse myself, and it might as well be this way as another. I
have a document, signed and solemnly sealed, by which I am to back him
against the field in the interest of romantic and realistic literature,
and in return he is to give me a third of the net profits of his
writings. I don't know that I have done so badly. Perhaps you may live
to see Cutt & Slashem pay us a handsome sum in royalties."

Mr. Gouger looked oddly at his friend, whose face was perfectly serious.

"What are you going to begin with?" he asked.

"Love, of course. It is the A B C, as well as the X Y Z of the whole
business."

"What kind of love?"

"The best that can be got," replied Weil, now laughing in spite of
himself. "The very finest quality in the market. Oh, we shall do this up
brown, I