roared too. I declare! We hadn't had such a laugh since the day Old Hobbins forgot his wig.
Well, when we had got pretty well shaken up, we quieted down again, and talked the matter over soberly. That is, by spells. For every little while the absurdity of the thing would come over me and off I would go again. Brunt was good-natured about it, though he didn't alwaysjoinin. First of all, he swore me to secrecy. He did not want any halfway work, he said. He was going to give his experiment a fair trial. He thought he had written a good novel; and that settled the question in my mind, for John was always harder to please than his readers. He said that if the book should be a failure or even a half success, he should be free to admit that it was owing to the woman's name. He proposed sending it to the Sandersons. Bates & Bramford knew his hand, which might betray his identity, and then he thought novels more in the Sandersons' line.
