“... to die content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan.”
I laughed as I kissed her.
“Good poets make unpractical fathers,” I said—“and you must not excite yourself, my loveliness. This money, well invested, is going to prove the nest-egg of our song-bird. We must line the nest, you know, if we want the bird to sing. And now, being independent of the public, I am going to pull its ears.”
“You donkey,” she said, and pulled mine.
So ends the Great Skene Mystery, the symbol of whose “stopping” is to be found at this day, if one is curious enough to look for it, in the little lead plug let into a hole in the floor of the old Court at Westminster, where once was inserted the rod which held the screen which protected the judges from the draughts. And, if I am Richard Gaskett still, I have at least earned a popular title to my name.
[The End]
NOTES.
[1] The Eye Equals Johnny himself—the ego, that is to say. All his own.
[2] For the sake of clearness, the story is given in reporter’s English, as afterwards minuted, and not in the hybrid phraseology characteristic of the narrator.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. frowsy/frowzy, notepaper/note-paper, etc.) have been preserved.
Text-edition only: “#” is used to indicate bolded text.
Alterations to the text:
Convert footnotes to endnotes.
Punctuation fixes: quotation mark pairing, missing periods, etc.
[Chapter III]
Change “to realise in it a a sense of my own” delete one a.
“to marshall these resolutely before my mind’s eye” to marshal.
[Chapter IV]
(“Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut,” she answered,) italicize French text.
[Chapter V]
“Didn’t she suggest this to to you?” delete one to.
[Chapter XI]
“a bottle of gin and one of peppermint esssence” to essence.
[Chapter XIII]
“that must be Jonnny Dando!” to Johnny.
[Chapter XV]
“consequences of an intreege with some girl” to intrigue.
[Chapter XX]
“honesty of the confession evercame me” to overcame.
[End of text]