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"I shall have to re-write it!" "My Lord," said Ninian, "fancy one of us writing a book!" Gilbert slapped him on the side of the head. "You forget, Ninian, that I've written a play!..." "A play's not a book!..." "My plays are books," Gilbert retorted. "Well, now," he went on, "what's to become of little Quinny: a tip-top novelist with a limited circulation or a third-rater who sells millions?"

At forty dollars that would be two cents a word. Pay on acceptance and two cents a word the newspapers had told the truth. And he had thought the White Mouse a third-rater! It was evident that he did not know the magazines. He had deemed the Transcontinental a first-rater, and it paid a cent for ten words.

"Say, if you'll give me a pencil and a pad of paper and about a half-day's time, I'll figure out for you what Henry Frick is worth in piasters and then you would have a fit. Why, in the land of ready money I'm only a third-rater, but I've got the four hundred million, all right." "But have you any social position?" asked the Governor-General. "Any rank? Any title?

There's Balfour and there's Chamberlain ... and then what is there?" "Nothing!" said Gilbert. "A clever man of my age has the chance of a lifetime with the Tories now," Roger continued. "Look at F. E. Robinson ... and he's only a third-rater!" Gilbert told a story of the early days of the Tory Party after the General Election of 1900 when the Tories had been completely routed by the Liberals.

"I'm leavin' in two days." "We're leaving in two days." They chewed gum for an interval. "Way it is," said Spike at length, "I'm nothing but about a fourth-rater in my game. I wasn't never a first-rater. I used to kid myself I was, but handier guys took it out of me. Never was better than a third-rater, I guess. But maybe in this other game I could git to be a first-rater. You can't tell.

That such an astounding thing as the rise of a new champion threatened had been foreseen by few. In the East Perry Blair had been little known and reckoned a third-rater. But those who had been West to see the bout which ended so suddenly brought back fragments which put a nice edge upon the imaginations of the sporting editors.