Jack's room is rather dark, and the weather, on the day of the Oaks, was rather dingy. We had the shutters closed at half-past seven, and sat down to dinner; soused salmon, perigord pie, iced champagne, and mareschino. Some almonds and raisins, hard biscuit, and a bottle of cool claret, made their appearance when the cloth was removed, and Jack began--"I don't believe there was ever such a jumper as the grey mare since the siege of Troy, when the horse got over the wall." "Is she hurt?" "Lord bless you," said Jack, "she's dead. When she got over the hedge she grew too proud of herself, and personal vanity was the ruin of her. She took a tremendous spiked gate, and caught it with her hind legs; the spikes kept her fast, the gate swung open, and the poor mare was so disgusted that she broke her heart. She was worth two hundred guineas; so that the Derby this year has cost me a fortune. The stanhope is all to atoms, and the farmer claims compensation for the gate. It's a very lucky thing I thought of the book." "Oh, you still go on with the novel?" "It's done, man, finished--perfect." "All written out?" "Not a word of it. That isn't the way people write books now; no, I have clipped out half of it with a pair of scissors, and the half is all marked with pencil." "But the authors will find you out." "Not a bit of it. No author reads any body's writings but his own; or if they do, I'll deny it--that's all; and the public will only think the poor fellow prodigiously vain, to believe that any one would quote his book. And, besides, here are the reviews?" "Of the book that isn't published?" "To be sure. Here are two or three sentences from Macauley's 'Milton,' half a page from Wilson's 'Wordsworth,' and a good lump from Jeffrey's 'Walter Scott.' Between them, they made out my book to be a very fine thing, I assure you. I sha'n't sell it under five hundred pounds." "Do you give your name?" "Certainly not--unless I were a lord. No. I think I shall pass for a woman: a young girl, perhaps; daughter of a bishop; or the divorced wife of a member of parliament." "I should like to hear some of your work. I am interested." "I know you are. We have a bet, you know; but I have found out a strange thing in correcting my novel--that you can make a whole story out of any five chapters." "No, no. You're quizzing." "Not I. I tell you, out of any five chapters, of any five novels, you make a very good short tale; and the odd thing is, it doesn't the least matter which chapters you choose. With a very little sagacity, the reader sees the whole; and, let me tell you, the great fault of story-writing is telling too much, and leaving too little for the reader to supply to himself. Recollect what I told you about altering the names of all the characters, and, with that single proviso, read chapter fifteen of the first volume of this----"