_MR. SADROCK_ (_mixing himself an egg nogg_). Will you join me?
_MYSELF._ No, thank you. But I like to see you applying yourself to
Subsidiary Studies to the Art of Butler.
_MR. SADROCK_ (_roaring with laughter_). That's very good. Some day you
must put your best things into a book.
_MYSELF._ You bet.
_MR. SADROCK._ I wonder why it is that you make me so frank. It is your
wonderful sympathetic understanding, I suppose. I long to tell you
something now.
_MYSELF_ (_affecting not to care_). Do. I am secrecy itself.
_MR. SADROCK._ Would it surprise you to know that I am privily a Dissenter?
Do you know that I often steal away in a false beard to attend the services
of Hard-Shell Baptists and Plymouth Brethren?
_MYSELF._ I hope I am no longer capable of feeling anything so _démodé_ as
surprise.
_MR. SADROCK._ And that I prefer _Robert Elsmere_ to the _Iliad_?
_MYSELF._ May I print those declarations in my book?
_MR. SADROCK._ Some day, yes, but not yet, not yet.
* * * * *