Well, let's hear about your taste in prose." Mr.McCunn was much bewildered, and a little inclined to be cross.

He disliked being called Dogson, which seemed to him an abuse of his etymological confidences.

But his habit of politeness held.
He explained rather haltingly his preferences in prose.
Mr.Heritage listened with wrinkled brows.
"You're even deeper in the mud than I thought," he remarked.

"You live in a world of painted laths and shadows.

All this passion for the picturesque! Trash, my dear man, like a schoolgirl's novelette heroes.
You make up romances about gipsies and sailors, and the blackguards they call pioneers, but you know nothing about them.