"It was long before the vulgar one saw it, and then he laughed so much that the baby began to cry, and they had to go into the next room for fear of disturbing it. Having left the door open, the fair baby got out of its cradle, and, being old enough to walk, went quietly upstairs, and there what should he see in a cradle in the room above but Alicia! This was the first time the two met. They did not say much, but Cupid's arrow went through them both from that minute. That's all," said Harry.

There was a silence, which at last I broke.

"And which chapter do you think we'd better put in?"

"That's just what I was going to ask you," said Harry.

"You see," said I cautiously, "you've got rather a lot about that fair chap in yours, and he's not in the plot."

"Oh, he turns out somebody," said Harry.

"Who?"

"I don't know yet."

"He's not the hero, of course?" said I decisively; "he's to be a mixture of both."

"Oh, of course," said Harry. "But, I say, don't you think there's rather too much about scenery in yours? There's very little of that in _Nicholas Nickleby_, or poetry either."

"No; that struck me as one of the weak points of _Nicholas Nickleby_,"

said I.

"I thought it was settled the hero was to be in it from the first?" said Harry, falling back on another line of defence.

"So he is. I shall say in the next chapter that he was in the room underneath all the time," said I, rather testily.

"Oh, well," said Harry, "of course if you think yours is the best, you'd better stick it in. I'm out of it, if you're going in for poetry."

"You're not obliged to do any poetry," said I. "Thanks. I shouldn't try unless I was sure of writing something that wasn't doggerel," said Harry. This was. .h.i.tting me on a tender point. "Look here," said I, starting up, "do you mean to tell me I write doggerel?"

"I didn't say so."

"You meant it. I'd sooner write doggerel than stuff I'd be ashamed to read in a `penny dreadful.' Call yourself a fair boy!"

Alas for our novel! We spent half an hour that evening in anything but a literary compet.i.tion.

Aunt Sarah remarked on Harry's black eye and my one-sided countenance at breakfast next morning, and inquired artlessly if _English composition_ had caused them. We truly answered, "Yes."

Our friendship was quickly restored; but our poor novel, after that one evening, has never lifted up its head again. We have sometimes vaguely talked of finishing it, but we have been careful to avoid all discussion of details, still less all reference to Chapter One. In fact, we have come to the conclusion that it is better not to startle the world at too early an age. If you do, you are expected to keep it up, and that interferes with your enjoyment of life.

When our Novel does come out, well, we think Conan Doyle, Wells, and those other fellows will sit up.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Preface.

OUR OWN PENNY-DREADFUL.

I am always coming across old ma.n.u.scripts. I am not sure of the date of the following, but I fancy it must have been written for a prize, which, strange to say, it failed to secure. The only conditions were that the story should have lots of "go" in it, that the incidents should be natural, the tone elevating, and the characters carefully studied.

I ask any of my readers if this does not fulfil all these conditions? I know when it was returned to me as "not quite the style we care about,"

I was extremely angry, and replied that I should very much like to see what style they did care about, if not this. They had not the common politeness to reply!

Another publisher to whom I submitted it actually wrote back that he was not in the habit of publishing "penny dreadfuls." I was never so insulted in all my life!

However, as a specimen of the kind of story some boys read, and some editors do _not_ publish, the reader shall have my "penny dreadful," and decide for himself whether it has not lots of "go," is not strictly true to nature, elevating in tone, and carefully studied. If it is not, then he had better not read it!

The Plaster Cast; Or Septimus Minor's Million.

A Thrilling Story in Fifteen Chapters, by the Author of "Blugram Blunderbuss, or the Dog-Man."

Sub-Chapter I.

THE MURDER!

The golden sun was plunging his magnificent head angrily into the sheen of the bronze Atlantic when Septimus Minor scaled the craggy path which leads from Crocusville to the towering cliff above.

The wind came and went in fitful gusts, which now and again carried Septimus off his feet, and sometimes lifted him a foot or two over the edge of the rugged cliff in time for another eddy to carry him back.

Nature this evening suited the gusty humour of Septimus Minor's breast.

"The crisis of my life approaches!" he said to himself, as a magnificent wave from below leapt eight hundred feet in the air, and fell, drenching him from head to foot. "I am fifteen years old next week, and something here,"--here he laid his right hand on his left side--"tells me I am a man."

As he spoke, another wave leapt skyward, and out of it emerged the form of a man.

"Yes!" cried Septimus. "Her father!"

Septimus was the youngest of seven children, most of whom were orphans.

But we digress.

"Belay there--haul in your mainslacks, and splice your marline-spike.

Where are you coming to?" cried Peeler, the coastguardsman--for such, we need hardly say, was the rank of the new arrival.

"How are you?" said Sep, in an off-hand way.

"Blooming," said the not altogether refined Peeler.

A gust of wind lifted them both up the twenty remaining yards of the cliff, and left them standing on a sheltered crag at the extreme brink.

"Spin us a yarn," said Sep.

The setting sun cast a lurid flash over the figures of that strangely a.s.sorted pair. The next moment it had set, and nothing was visible but the reflection of the end of Sep's cigar in the gla.s.s eye of his interlocutor.

Septimus Minor had lived in Crocusville ever since he could remember, and the coastguardsman some years longer. Hence Sep's request.

Mr Peeler was a fine specimen of his cla.s.s. He wore a sou'wester and boots to match, and round his shoulders--