"Pray make no excuses," says Elsley, delighted. "I have written, of course. Who can help writing, sir, while Nature is so glorious, and man so wretched? One cannot but take refuge from the pettiness of the real in the contemplation of the ideal. Yes, I have written. I will send you my last book down. I don't know whether you will find me improved." "How can I doubt that I shall?" "Saddened, perhaps; perhaps more severe in my taste; but we will not talk of that. I owe you a debt, sir, for having furnished me with one of the most striking 'motifs' I ever had. I mean that miraculous escape of yours. It is seldom enough, in this dull every-day world, one stumbles on such an incident ready made to one's hands, and needing only to be described as one sees it." And the weak, vain man chatted on, and ended by telling Tom all about his poem of "The Wreck," in a tone which seemed to imply that he had done Tom a serious favour, perhaps raised him to immortality, by putting him in a book. Tom thanked him gravely for the said honour, bowed him at last out of the shop, and then vaulted back clean over the counter, as soon as Elsley was out of sight, and commenced an Indian war-dance of frantic character, accompanying himself by an extemporary chaunt, with which the name of John Briggs was frequently intermingled;-- "If I don't know you, Johnny, my boy, In spite of all your beard; Why then I am a slower fellow, Than ever has yet appeared, "Oh if it was but he! what a card for me! What a world it is for poor honest rascals like me to try a fall with!-- "Why didn't I take bad verse to make, And call it poetry; And so make up to an earl's daughter, Which was of high degree? "But perhaps I am wrong after all: no--I saw he knew me, the humbug; though he never was a humbug, never rose above the rank of fool. However, I'll make assurance doubly sure, and then,--if it pays me not to tell him I know him, I won't tell him; and if it pays me to tell him, I will tell him. Just as you choose, my good Mr. Poet." And Tom returned to his work, singing an extempore parody of "We met, 'twas in a crowd," ending with-- "And thou art the cause of this anguish, my pill-box," in a howl so doleful, that Mrs. Heale marched into the shop, evidently making up her mind for an explosion. "I am very sorry, sir, to have to speak to you upon such a subject, but I must say, that the profane songs, sir, which our house is not at all accustomed to them; not to mention that at your time of life, and in your position, sir, as my husband's assistant, though there's no saying (with a meaning toss of the head) how long it may last,"--and there, her grammar having got into a hopeless knot, she stopped. Tom looked at her cheerfully and fixedly. "I had been expecting this," said he to himself. "Better show the old cat at once that I carry claws as well as she."