"Well, I'll take you to a little French restaurant in Soho, and we'll have dinner. Half a crown. Can you afford?"
Richard nodded.
"And, I say, bring along some of your manuscripts, and I'll flay them alive for you."
CHAPTER VI
An inconstant, unrefreshing breeze, sluggish with accumulated impurity, stirred the curtains, and every urban sound—high-pitched voices of children playing, roll of wheels and rhythmic trot of horses, shouts of newsboys and querulous barking of dogs—came through the open windows touched with a certain languorous quality that suggested a city fatigued, a city yearning for the moist recesses of woods, the disinfectant breath of mountain tops, and the cleansing sea.
On the little table between the windows lay pen, ink, and paper. Richard sat down to be an author. Since his conversation with Mr. Aked of the day before he had lived in the full glow of an impulse to write. He discerned, or thought he discerned, in the fact that he possessed the literary gift, a key to his recent life. It explained, to be particular, the passion for reading which had overtaken him at seventeen, and his desire to come to London, the natural home of the author. Certainly it was strange that hitherto he had devoted very little serious thought to the subject of writing, but happily there were in existence sundry stray verses and prose fragments written at Bursley, and it contented him to recognise in these the first tremulous stirrings of a late-born ambition.
During the previous evening he had busied himself in deciding upon a topic. In a morning paper he had read an article entitled "An Island of Sleep," descriptive of Sark; it occurred to him that a similar essay upon Lichfield, the comatose cathedral city which lay about thirty miles from Bursley, might suit a monthly magazine. He knew Lichfield well; he had been accustomed to visit it from childhood; he loved it. As a theme full of picturesque opportunities it had quickened his imagination, until his brain seemed to surge with vague but beautiful fancies. In the night his sleep had been broken, and several new ideas had suggested themselves. And now, after a day of excited anticipation, the moment for composition had arrived.
As he dipped his pen in the ink a sudden apprehension of failure surprised him. He dismissed it, and wrote in a bold hand, rather carefully,—