A scene from the throne room

Your compliments are priced in ink, but there is no ink, only one cartridge, and that cartridge already has a goblet's title and no ink. The bottom line is that we have raised fifty-nine dollars of fifteen and charged forty a rhyme that nobody has bought. I am beginning to suspect the crossword clue is "a form of accounting that flatters the customer."

The Well of State, decreed, entered in the ledger at four fifteen, and Miss Havisham has claimed it as its patron — she sets a place for it at noon.