"Oh, no doubt he'll like them or he wouldn't have sent all that way for them. Well! well! some men are mighty whimsical in their tastes, and there's no denying that people do read verses." "However," said Charles, "I take it the taste is not an extended one?" "Well! you mustn't complain. You had two hundred taken by subscription and half a dozen copies sold to casual purchasers. You won't lose a vast deal over the publication." "No," said Charles, "you wouldn't like that?" "No, indeed I shouldn't, sir, I take a pride in the success of my clients. So did my father, sir, and he became an alderman of this town, though he was a native of Exeter." "I take it, then, you are not prepared to offer a sum of money on account of a new volume?" "Ho-ho!" laughed Mr. Virgin, "what a droll gentleman you are to be sure. You will have your joke, and don't seem to regard how busy I am." "Very well, sir," said Charles, "I'll wish you a good night." "_Good_ night, Mr. Lovely, good night, sir. When I'm not so busy perhaps, another time, I'll be most happy to talk over your--ahem--literary projects." Mr. Virgin held up the candle to light Mr. Lovely through the shop. The rays happened to fall on a pile of slim volumes reposing on the counter. "What are those?" Charles asked. "Ah, 'tis a great pity you can't write verse like that." "Poems?" said Mr. Lovely in accents of incredulity. "To be sure--poems, but such poems,--lampoons, squibs, and pasquinades. 'Tis a Satire on the characters of the Bath--very scandalous, they tell me, but oddscods, 'tas run through nine editions in as many weeks. Now, if your name was Lively, sir, instead of Lovely." "Mr. Virgin!" "No offence. What I mean is, if you could write something similar about the visitors to Curtain Wells." "You'd publish it?" "Well, perhaps that's going too far, but I would give it my very best attention." "Humph! Good night," and Charles went out into the drizzle. On his way home, he saw the Exquisite Mob and the Exquisite Mob-master grouped before a satirist; and very soon he saw them performing their anticks thinly disguised by initials and asterisks. That is how Mr. Charles Lovely sat down to indite _CURTAIN POLLS_ severely lashed by a _Curtain Rod_. _Chapter the Sixteenth_ THE CHINESE MASQUERADE