"Dexter's House" writes: "Please send me one hundred (100) lines from _Aeneid, Book Two_. Mr. Dexter was so delighted with the last I showed him that he has asked me to do some more." "Enthusiast" writes: "Thank you for your Greek numerals. Day took them without blinking. So beautifully were they executed that I can hardly believe even now that I did not write them myself." * * * * * There could be no doubt about the popularity of the Trust. It caught on instantly. Nothing else was discussed in the form-rooms at the quarter to eleven interval, and in the houses after lunch it was the sole topic of conversation. Dunstable and Linton were bombarded with questions and witticisms of the near personal sort. To the latter they replied with directness, to the former evasively. "What's it all _about?_" someone would ask, fluttering the leaflet before Dunstable's unmoved face. "You should read it carefully," Dunstable would reply. "It's all there." "But what are you playing at?" "We tried to make it clear to the meanest intelligence. Sorry you can't understand it." While at the same time Linton, in his form-room, would be explaining to excited inquirers that he was sorry, but it was impossible to reply to their query as to who was running the Trust. He was not at liberty to reveal business secrets. Suffice it that there the lines were, waiting to be bought, and he was there to sell them. So that if anybody cared to lay in a stock, large or small, according to taste, would he kindly walk up and deposit the necessary coin? But here the public showed an unaccountable disinclination to deal. It was gratifying to have acquaintances coming up and saying admiringly: "You are an ass, you know," as if they were paying the highest of compliments--as, indeed, they probably imagined that they were. All this was magnificent, but it was not business. Dunstable and Linton felt that the whole attitude of the public towards the new enterprise was wrong. Locksley seemed to regard the Trust as a huge joke, and its prospectus as a literary _jeu d'esprit_. In fact, it looked very much as if--from a purely commercial point of view--the great Lines Supplying Trust was going to be what is known in theatrical circles as a frost. For two whole days the public refused to bite, and Dunstable and Linton, turning over the stacks of lines in their studies, thought gloomily that this world is no place for original enterprise. Then things began to move. It was quite an accident that started them. Jackson, of Dexter's, was teaing with Linton, and, as was his habit, was giving him a condensed history of his life since he last saw him. In the course of this he touched on a small encounter with M. Gaudinois which had occurred that afternoon. "So I got two pages of 'Quatre-Vingt Treize' to write," he concluded, "for doing practically nothing."