"Well, would a guinea meet your views?" he asked.
I have read of people being at a loss for words, and dumb with emotion, and I've read of people being turned to stone with astonishment, or joy, or something, but I never knew how silly it looked till I saw Noël standing staring at the Editor with his mouth open. He went red and he went white, and then he got crimson, as if you were rubbing more and more crimson lake on a palette. But he didn't say a word, so Oswald had to say—
"I should jolly well think so."
So the Editor gave Noël a sovereign and a shilling, and he shook hands with us both, but he thumped Noël on the back and said—
"Buck up, old man! It's your first guinea, but it won't be your last. Now go along home, and in about ten years you can bring me some more poetry. Not before—see? I'm just taking this poetry of yours because I like it very much; but we don't put poetry in this paper at all. I shall have to put it in another paper I know of."
"What do you put in your paper?" I asked, for Father always takes the Daily Chronicle, and I didn't know what the Recorder was like. We chose it because it has such a
