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.
'Consequently,' said Mr.Grewgious, 'Mr.Bazzard would have a sense of my inferiority to himself under any circumstances; but when I am his master, you know, the case is greatly aggravated.' Mr.Grewgious shook his head seriously, as if he felt the offence to be a little too much, though of his own committing.
'How came you to be his master, sir ?' asked Rosa.
'A question that naturally follows,' said Mr.Grewgious.

'Let's talk.
Mr.Bazzard's father, being a Norfolk farmer, would have furiously laid about him with a flail, a pitch-fork, and every agricultural implement available for assaulting purposes, on the slightest hint of his son's having written a play.

So the son, bringing to me the father's rent (which I receive), imparted his secret, and pointed out that he was determined to pursue his genius, and that it would put him in peril of starvation, and that he was not formed for it.' 'For pursuing his genius, sir ?' 'No, my dear,' said Mr.Grewgious, 'for starvation.