_A._ I perceive; but I shall certainly stick there without your assistance.
_B._ You shall have it, my dear fellow. In a week I will call again, and see how you get on. Then we'll introduce the heroine; that, I can tell you, requires some tact--_au revoir._
_A._ Thanks, many thanks, my dear Barnstaple. Fare you well.
_A._ (_Looking over his memoranda._)--It will do! (_Hopping and dancing about the room._) Hurrah! my tailor's bill will be paid after all!
[_Mr Arthur Ansard's Chambers as before. Mr Ansard, with his eyes fixed upon the wig block, gnawing the feather end of his pen. The table, covered with sundry sheets of foolscap, shows strong symptoms of the Novel progressing._]
Where is Barnstaple? If he do not come soon, I shall have finished my novel without a heroine. Well, I'm not the first person who has been foiled by a woman. (_Continues to gnaw his pen in a brown study._)
_Barnstaple enters unperceived, and slaps Ansard on the shoulder. The latter starts up._
_B._ So, friend Ansard, making your dinner off your pen: it is not every novel writer who can contrive to do that even in anticipation. Have you profited by my instructions?
_A._ I wish I had. I assure you that this light diet has not contributed, as might be expected, to assist a heavy head; and one feather is not sufficient to enable my genius to take wing. If the public knew what dull work it is to write a novel, they would not be surprised at finding them dull reading. _Ex nihilo nihil fit._ Barnstaple, I am at the very bathos of stupidity.
_B._ You certainly were absorbed when I entered, for I introduced myself.
_A._ I wish you had introduced another personage with you--you would have been doubly welcome.
_A._ My heroine. I have followed your instructions to the letter. My hero is as listless as I fear my readers will be, and he is not yet in love. In fact, he is only captivated with himself. I have made him dismiss Coridon.
_A._ He was sent to ascertain the arms on the panel of a carriage. In his eagerness to execute his master's wishes, he came home with a considerable degree of perspiration on his brow, for which offence he was immediately put out of doors.
_B._ Bravo--it was unpardonable--but still----
_A._ O! I know what you mean--that is all arranged; he has an annuity of one hundred pounds per annum.