Grewgious suddenly jerked out of himself for the second time:
'Let's talk. We were speaking of Mr. Bazzard. It's a secret, and
moreover it is Mr. Bazzard's secret; but the sweet presence at my
table makes me so unusually expansive, that I feel I must impart it
in inviolable confidence. What do you think Mr. Bazzard has done?'
'O dear!' cried Rosa, drawing her chair a little nearer, and her
mind reverting to Jasper, 'nothing dreadful, I hope?'
'He has written a play,' said Mr. Grewgious, in a solemn whisper.
'A tragedy.'
Rosa seemed much relieved.
'And nobody,' pursued Mr. Grewgious in the same tone, 'will hear,
on any account whatever, of bringing it out.'
Rosa looked reflective, and nodded her head slowly; as who should
say, 'Such things are, and why are they!'
'Now, you know,' said Mr. Grewgious, '_I_ couldn't write a play.'
'Not a bad one, sir?' said Rosa, innocently, with her eyebrows
again in action.
'No. If I was under sentence of decapitation, and was about to be
instantly decapitated, and an express arrived with a pardon for the
condemned convict Grewgious if he wrote a play, I should be under
the necessity of resuming the block, and begging the executioner to
proceed to extremities,--meaning,' said Mr. Grewgious, passing his
hand under his chin, 'the singular number, and this extremity.'
Rosa appeared to consider what she would do if the awkward
supposititious case were hers.
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