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Rh “Do you say that merely to disguise the fact of my ridiculous failure?” he asked.

Katharine looked up from her reading with a smile.

“He says he doesn’t mind what we think of him,” she remarked. “He says we don’t care a rap for art of any kind.”

“I asked her to pity me, and she teases me!” Rodney exclaimed.

“I don’t intend to pity you, Mr. Rodney,” Mary remarked, kindly, but firmly. “When a paper’s a failure, nobody says anything, whereas now, just listen to them!”

The sound, which filled the room, with its hurry of short syllables, its sudden pauses, and its sudden attacks, might be compared to some animal hubbub, frantic and inarticulate.

“D’you think that’s all about my paper?” Rodney inquired, after a moment’s attention, with a distinct brightening of expression.

“Of course it is,” said Mary. “It was a very suggestive paper.”

She turned to Denham for confirmation, and he corroborated her.

“It’s the ten minutes after a paper is read that proves whether it’s been a success or not,” he said. “If I were you, Rodney, I should be very pleased with myself.”

This commendation seemed to comfort Mr. Rodney completely, and he began to bethink him of all the passages in his paper which deserved to be called “suggestive.”

“Did you agree at all, Denham, with what I said about Shakespeare’s later use of imagery? I’m afraid I didn’t altogether make my meaning plain.”

Here he gathered himself together, and by means of a series of frog–like jerks, succeeded in bringing himself close to Denham.