Three Speeds Forward
all that, is it such a crime to amuse the public?"
"But you tortured them," I said. "Your advertisement is only too true; and really and truly, how can you expect us to be chummy with a man that has maddened a continent!"
He groaned at this, and put out his hand as though to implore me to stop.
"I suppose," he remarked at last, very bitingly, "I suppose that if Sir Isaac Newton had sold peanuts, or Darwin had eked out his income by peddling the 'Life of General Grant,' you'd be quite blind to the trifling additions they made to the store of human knowledge."
"Oh, I wouldn't," I said. "But I wouldn't like to answer for Studdingham. Besides—I don't want to be rude, you know—but we see only the peanut side of your career, and, up to now, nobody had even guessed that there was another."
I waited for him to tell me what it was, but he didn't. I couldn't help feeling curious
30
