"
"Oh, you're thinking about my thesis. What I said about Warwickshire was
just a little flight of fancy, I guess,--a bit of doorstep travel. I'm
likely enough to stay where I am."
"Well, how about the thesis, really?"
"I think I shall end by digging something out of Here and Now. 'Our Middle-
West School of Fiction,'--what would you think of that?"
"H'm! If you can make it seem worth while...."
"Well, can't I?"
"Your work, from the very nature of it, must be critical. Now the critic,
nine times out of ten, takes down a volume from its established shelf,
dusts it off, ruffles the leaves a bit, and then puts it back where it was.
The ruffling is sometimes very nice and interesting and often gives the
ruffler a good position in the glorious company of earlier rufflers----"
"I shouldn't be satisfied with anything like that. Things have got to move.
I want to take some recent, less-known men and put _them_ on the
shelves."
"Yet you don't want to waste work on material which time may show as of
transient value, or of none."
"A fellow must chance it. Who gives quickly gives twice;--I suppose that
applies to praise as well as to money.
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