"Once or twice," he said, "I have had an article taken by one of the big reviews; sometimes I get some odd reporting to do; and whiles I just have to write chatty paragraphs about celebrities for the snippety papers." "Uphill work that, I should think." "Uphill? Downhill! Man, it's degrading. Do you know what I was doing in that Museum this morning?" "What?" "Have you heard tell of a man they call Dean Ramsay?" "Let me see--yes. He was a sort of Scottish Sidney Smith, wasn't he?" "That is the man. Well, he collected most of the good stories in Scotland and put them in a book. I was copying a few of them out; and I shall father them on to folk that the public wants to hear about. I get a guinea a column for that." "I know the sort of thing," I said. "_'A good story is at present going the round of the clubs, concerning----'_" "Not 'concerning'--'anent'!" "I beg your pardon--'anent a certain well-known but absent-minded Peer of the Realm.'" "That's the stuff. You have the trick of it. Then sometimes I do bits of general information--computations as to the height of a column of the picture postcards sold in London in a year, and all that. Nobody can check figures of that kind, so the work is easy--and correspondingly ill-paid!" (I cannot reproduce the number of contemptuous _r_'s that Robin threw into the adverb.) "It's a fine useful place the Museum," he continued reflectively. "You were busy there this morning yourself. You would be collecting _data_ anent--I mean _about_--the Island of Caerulea." I sat up in surprise at this. "How on earth----?" I began. "Oh, I just jal--guessed it. You being the only member of his Majesty's Government in whom I have any personal interest, I have always followed your career closely. (You gave me your card, you'll mind.) Well, I saw you were having trouble with yon havering body Wuddiford--I once reported at one of his meetings: he's just a sweetie-wife in _pince-nez_--and when I saw you busy with an atlas and gazetteer I said to myself:--'He'll be getting up a few salient facts about the place, in order to appease the honourable member's insatiable thirst for knowledge--Toots, there I go again! Man, the journalese fairly soaks into the system. I doubt now if I could write out twenty lines of 'Paradise Lost' without cross-heading them!" We finished our cigar over talk like this, and finally rose to go. Robin lingered upon the steps of the restaurant. I realised that he, being a Scotsman, was endeavouring to pump up the emotional gratitude which he felt sure that I, as an Englishman, would expect from a starving pauper who had lunched at my expense. "I must thank you," he said at last, rather awkwardly, "for a most pleasant luncheon. And I should like fine," he added suddenly and impetuously, "to make out a _precis_ for you on the subject of Caerulea. Never heed it yourself! Away home, and I'll send it to you to-morrow!"