Pettigrew offered each of us a Splendidad (his wife's new brand), which we dropped into the fireplace.

Then he filled my little Remus with Arcadia, and sinking weariedly into a chair, said: "My dear Jimmy, the curse of journalism is not that editors won't accept our articles, but that they want too many from us." This seemed such monstrous nonsense to Jimmy that he turned his back on Pettigrew, and Gilray broke in with a diatribe against critics.
"Critics," said Pettigrew, "are to be pitied rather than reviled." Then Gilray and Jimmy had a common foe.

Whether it was Pettigrew's appearance among us or the fireworks outside that made us unusually talkative that night I cannot say, but we became quite brilliant, and when Jimmy began to give us his dream about killing an editor, Gilray said that he had a dream about criticising critics; and Pettigrew, not to be outdone, said that he had a dream of what would become of him if he had to write any more Jubilee articles.

Then it was that Marriot suggested a competition.

"Let each of the grumblers," he said, "describe his dream, and the man whose dream seems the most exhilarating will get from the judges a Jubilee pound-tin of the Arcadia." The grumblers agreed, but each wanted the others to dream first.