"Wear them by all means. But you must make up your mind for a certain amount of wear and tear. In your case it will probably be tear." "That's my look-out." "Quite so. I wouldn't say anything if it was only Hanson you'd offended, but you shouldn't alienate your friends." "My friends?" "Yes. Why, oh why, did you make that joke about Mackinnon's head?" "We were all making jokes about Mackinnon's head." "Yes; but we weren't all of us bringing out poems the next day. Your position, Ricky-ticky, was one of peculiar delicacy--and danger." "What does it matter?" said Rickman wearily. "I can trust my friends to speak the truth about me." "Heaven bless you, Rickman, and may your spring suitings last for ever." He added, as Jewdwine had added, "Anyhow, this friend will do his level best for you." At which Rickman's demon returned again. "Don't crack me up too much, Maddy. You might do me harm." But before midnight Maddox burst into the office and flung himself on to his desk. "Give me room!" he cried; "I mean to spread myself, to roll, to wallow, to wanton, to volupt!" Before morning he had poured out his soul, in four columns of _The Planet_, the exuberant, irrepressible soul of the Celt. He did it in an hour and twenty minutes. As he said himself afterwards (relating his marvellous achievement) he was sustained by one continuous inspiration; his passionate pen paused neither for punctuation nor for thought. The thoughts, he said, were there. As the critical notices only appeared weekly, to pause would have entailed a delay of seven days, and he meant that his panegyric should appear the very next day after the article in the _Literary Observer_, as an answer to Hanson's damnable paragraph. If Maddox was urged to these excesses by his contempt for Jewdwine's critical cowardice, Jewdwine was cooled by the spectacle of Maddox's intemperance. He had begun by feeling a little bitter towards Rickman on his own account. He was disappointed in him. Rickman had shown that he was indifferent to his opinion. That being so, Jewdwine might have been forgiven if he had had no very keen desire to help him. Still, he _had_ desired to help him; but his desire had ceased after reading Maddox's review. There was no pleasure in helping him now, since he had allowed himself to be taken up and caressed so violently by other people. The clumsy hand of Maddox had brushed the first bloom from his Rickman, that once delightful youth. He was no longer Jewdwine's Rickman, his disciple, his discovery.