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 Mrs. Tinker never hears that you had anything to do with it. She never would understand! So that's all there is to say about that. Let's get on to something else."

"Very well," Ogle said in a low voice. The colour had returned to his face during this disposal of "The Pastoral Scene";—in truth, he was now as warmly flushed as Tinker, and a frown as deep as the latter's had appeared upon his forehead. "What else, if you please?"

"I understand from Babe," Tinker said, "you're going to do other kinds of writing as a regular business and try plays on the side, as it were, because you don't consider theatre work reliable enough in the way of income. She says you already have done this other work and got yourself enough established in it so't you can count on it. Well, that's all right, and I don't want you to think I haven't got any respect for literature, because I have. I don't know all this and that about it the way my wife and Babe do—I been too busy—but still I think it has its own place. I'll say this to you, Mr. Ogle: while it might 'a' seemed more satisfactory to me if you'd been in something regular and substantial, something kind of more like men's business, as you might put it, still,