What I mean is, that chapter was composed in the manner in which true Creative Genius is in the habit of composing, as I understand; made, that is, out of the whole cloth,—woven of strands of air. But even here, though mounted on a genuine (though borrowed) earth-spurning Pegasus, I have not swerved far from the line that the great Bœotian would have marked out for me. Charley’s courtship was quite real. It was the words only that I have had to invent, left in the lurch as I was by my two collaborators. And I was going to add that, in all probability, Charley made use of not one of those I have put in his mouth, when I recalled a coincidence so singular that I feel that the reader is entitled to hear of it. When I read to my coadjutors my version of their amours, their merriment was uproarious. Charley, I may mention, who only smiled when he was a bachelor, has, since his marriage, grown stout and taken to laughing. So far as he was concerned, my putting the word “abyss” in his mouth was the master-stroke of the whole chapter. “Why,” said he, choking with laughter, “I am sure I never made use of the word in my whole life!” “Neither had you ever before in your life made love to a girl,” I objected. “Don’t be too sure of that!” said Charley, with a knowing look. “H’m!” put in Alice. “What makes the thing so truly delicious,” said Charley, “is the lachrymose and woe-begone figure you make me cut; whereas—” “Ah?” said Alice, bridling up. “Whereas a chirpier lover than—” “Chirpy! oh!” “Why, Jack-Whack, if she did not love me the very first time she ever saw me,—_love_?—if she did not dote upon—” “Dote indeed! Very well! very well! He felt sure, did he? Now, Jack, I’ll leave it to you. I’ll tell you just what he said, and let you decide whether they were the words of a ‘chirpy’ lover. Chirpy, indeed! Mr. Frobisher, you are too absurd! We were walking up and down the piazza, and I had on my green and white silk dress,—plaid, you know; and he said—the first thing he said was—I remember it as well as if it had been yesterday—” I drew forth my pencil. Here, after all, providentially as it were, we were to have an authentic version of the amours of the silent man and her of the merry-glancing hazel eyes. “My dear,” began Charley, with nervous haste, “we are interrupting Jack; let him go on with his reading.” “Aha!” cried Alice, in triumph, “I thought—” Here Alice detected Charley giving me, with his off eye, a wink so huge that its corrugations (like waves bursting over a breakwater) scaled the barrier of his nose and betrayed what the other side of his face was at. Charley ducked his head just in time; and immediately thereafter began a series of dextrous manœuvres among the chairs and other furniture in the room, in evading Alice’s persistent efforts to smooth out some of the wrinkles that wicked wink had wrought. At last he tumbled into his seat rather blown, and with one cheek redder than the other.