"Not like Fynes, eh?" (Vance thought: "Last year Tristram Fynes was their idol," and shivered a little for his own future.) "Poor old Fynes," another of them took it up; "sounded as if he's struck a new note because he made his people talk in the vernacular. Nothing else new about him—might have worked up his method out of Zola. Probably did."

"Zola—who's he?" somebody yawned.

"Oh, I dunno. The French Thackeray, I guess."

"See here, fellows, who's read Thackeray, anyhow?"

"Nobody since Lytton Strachey, I guess."

"Well, anyway, This Globe is one great big book. Eh, Vance, that the way you see it?"

Vance roused himself and looked at the speaker. "Not the way I see life. Life's continuous."

"Gee! I guess you're confusing life with Rebecca. Let him get down and stretch his legs a minute, Becka, or he'll be writing books like The Corner Grocery."

Under shelter of the general laugh Vance shifted his position and lit a cigarette. "Oh, well—" Rebecca Strain grumbled, laying down her modelling tool and taking a light from his match.

"Life continuous—continuous? Why, it's a series of jumps in the dark. That's Mendel's law, anyhow," another budding critic took up the argument.

"Gee! Who's Mendel? Another new novelist?"

"Mendel? No. He's the guy that invented the principle of economy of labour. That's what Mendelism is, isn't it?"

"Well, I'm shattered! Why, you morons, Mendel was the Victorian fellow that found out about Nature's proceeding by jumps. He worked it out that she's a regular kangaroo. Before that all the Darwins and people thought she planned things out beforehand, like a careful mother—or the plot of a Fynes novel."

Fynes had become their recognized butt, and this was greeted by another laugh. Rebecca threw herself full length on the broken-springed divan, grumbling: "Well, it's too dark to go on. When'll you come back, Vance—tomorrow?"