“Two.  ’He has none of the culture, the spontaneity, the suavity, the reticence, the abandon, the heating power, the cooling power, the light, the shade, or any of the other ingredients referred to by the great Small in his noble work on poesy,’

“Three.  ‘This man doesn’t know how to write his own language.’

“As I am a poet, fancy my state of mind!  I am horribly cast down; don’t like to go out to dinner; am sure my butler, having read these reviews, despises me as an impostor; but while I sit sulking, in comes a dear friend and brother-poet.  ‘How do you know,’ says he, ’that Snooks didn’t write number one himself?  Or perhaps one of his clique did, for whom he is to do the same thing.’  I immediately shake hands with him.  This is evidently his candid opinion, and I love candour in a friend; besides, we both hate Snooks.  ‘And it is a well-known fact,’ he continues with friendly warmth, ’that Small’s great work won’t sell; how do you know that number two was not written by a brother or friend of the publisher’s, by way of an advertisement for it?’ By this time I am almost consoled.  Something strikes me with irresistible force.  I remember that that fellow Smith, who contested with me the election for the borough of Wigfield in eighteen hundred and fifty or sixty, has taken to literature.  He was at the head of the poll on that occasion, but my committee proving that he bribed, he lost his seat.  I came in.  It was said that I bribed too; but to discuss that now would be out of place.  I feel sure that Smith must have written number three.  In fact he said those very words concerning me on the hustings.”

“Gladys,” said Brandon, observing the child’s deep attention, “it is right you should know that the brother-poet had written a tragedy on tin-tacks.  Your father reviewed it, and said no family ought to be without it.”

“But you didn’t bribe father, and you didn’t copy from Snooks, I am sure,” said Gladys, determined to defend her father, even in his assumed character.

“What was the name of your thing, papa?” asked Barbara.

“I don’t know, my dear, I have not considered that matter.”

“It was called ‘The Burglar’s Betrothal,’” said Valentine.

“And do you think that Snooks really wrote that review?” she continued, contemplating her father through her eyeglass, for she was shortsighted.

“If you ask my sincere opinion, my dear, I must say that I think he did not; but if some other man had signed it, I should have been sure.  Which now I never shall be.”

Here the door was slowly opened, and the portly butler appeared, bearing in his own hands a fine dish of potatoes; from the same plot, he remarked to John, with those that had obtained the prize.  The butler looked proud.

“I feel as much elated,” said John, “as if I had raised them myself.  Is Nicholas here?”

“Yes, sir, and he has been saying that if the soil of your garden could only be kept dry, they would be finer still.”