For he undeniably sat there. He was fat, remarkably fat for a lad of twenty-two or thereabouts; and he had, as I noticed first of all, most enviably thick hair, sleeked down, and parted "on the side" with some fanfaronade in the way of capillary flourishes. He was rather curiously dressed, too, I considered: the lapels of his coat were so small and stiff; they were held in place, I deduced, by a coat-spring, which would be to-day, I could have no doubt, the only coat-spring in existence. And he wore a fawn-colored waistcoat, and his rigorous collar towered, incredible in height, above a sky-blue "Ascot tie," which was resplendently secured with a largish sword-hilt asparkle everywhere with diamonds. And to describe the majestic rotundities of this boy's shoulders as due to "padding" would be through understatement to deceive you; since these coat-shoulders could have been designed and builded (I reflected), by no imaginable tailor, but only by an upholsterer.... It must have been, in fine, a good twenty years since I had seen anybody appareled quite as he was.... "You see, I have just sold three stories to magazines," he continued, "and I was wondering, sir, if you would advise me to become a regular writer now." To that I gave my customary, sage and carefully considered reply. "Of course," I informed him, "there is a great deal to be said upon both sides." "I wrote five, you see: and I mailed them all out together. And The Smart Set took one; and The Argosy took the one I sent them, too; and Mr. Alden wrote me a real nice letter about the one I sent Harper's, and said they would be very glad to use it if I would let them say 'paunch' where I had written 'belly'--" "Dear me! and so you are already writing with offensive coarseness. But don't mind me. Go on." "Well, but I was just going to say, and that's all right, of course, though you do sort of think of Falstaff as having one. But the other two came back, although I can't see why, when you look at the stuff those very magazines--!" "You will see, by and by," I assured him: "and then you will wonder about the stories that did not come back." "Anyhow, I got a hundred and five dollars for the lot of them. Yes, sir, not a cent less. And to have three out of five stick, the very first time, is pretty unusual, don't you think?" To that I assented. "It is the bait in the trap, it is the stroke of doom, it is the tasted pomegranate of Persephone." "Then I have the notion for a book, too. It's about a young man who is in love with a girl--" "That now is a good idea. It is an idea that has possibilities." "--Only, he can't ask her to marry him, because she has lots of money, and he is poor. Of course, though, it all comes out all right in the end. His uncle left another will, you see." "Now was that will, by any chance," I wondered, "discovered long years afterward, in the secret drawer of an old desk? and did it transform your high-minded but impoverished hero into a multi-millionaire?"