There was nothing he loved so much as to print on the right occasion a thing he hated.

I had begun my visit to the great man on a Monday, and on the Wednesday his book came out.

A copy of it arrived by the first post, and he let me go out into the garden with it immediately after breakfast, I read it from beginning to end that day, and in the evening he asked me to remain with him the rest of the week and over the Sunday.
That night my manuscript came back from Mr.Pinhorn, accompanied with a letter the gist of which was the desire to know what I meant by trying to fob off on him such stuff.

That was the meaning of the question, if not exactly its form, and it made my mistake immense to me.

Such as this mistake was I could now only look it in the face and accept it.