“Except the maternal instinct in the Minorca, and that you could hardly be expected to supply.”

“Sporting records, that’s important, too; now how many men, sporting men even, are there who can say offhand what horse won the Derby in any particular year? Now it’s just a little thing of that sort⁠—”

“My dear sir,” interrupted Mellowkent, “there are at least four men in my club who can not only tell me what horse won in any given year, but what horse ought to have won and why it didn’t. If your book could supply a method for protecting one from information of that sort it would do more than anything you have yet claimed for it.”

“Geography,” said Caiaphas, imperturbably; “that’s a thing that a busy man, writing at high pressure, may easily make a slip over. Only the other day a well-known author made the Volga flow into the Black Sea instead of the Caspian; now, with this book⁠—”