Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/400

 feet broke upon my heretofore absorbed ears, and, turning round, I saw the old fellow following, just like, of all things, as I thought at the moment, some awed spaniel at his master's heels. I am sorry to have to confess to some feeling of contempt for my old friend, just for the moment, creeping over me; and this again was promptly followed by a serious business consideration, to the effect that Brown, while contributing but little, possibly nothing at all, worth inserting in our forthcoming work, and leaving me to supply all the brains, was yet to appropriate the full half of the profits. This latter consideration, in fact, took quite a sudden hold upon me at that moment; and no wonder, for the prospects of our volume were then of the most promising kind. So I resolved, there and then, upon a cautiously tentative approach to the subject.

"Well, Brown," said I, with an assumed perfect indifference, "all these wonders we have passed through are grand padding to our volume. Profit looms ahead if they are properly described."

"Oh, bother your profit, Green!" said Brown energetically, with all the disgusted air of a mind unwillingly interrupted in other and higher thoughts.

"Hoity, toity!" said I to myself: "what's all up now! And is even old Brown amongst the prophets—lost perhaps in that grand mist of the universe we have just been exploring! "I was most immensely amused. But presently the matter took with me, somewhat irresistibly, a business shape. "Well, Brown," I said, "if you don't mind those despised considerations, I am agreeable, by myself alone, to take all the trouble, as well as stand solely good for all the