"I did, sir. Everyone does it that comes to anything. I didn't come to anything, though I made a bit of money at one time. But then mine was a queer case. I was knocked over by dyspepsia. Beware of dyspepsia. I was violently dyspeptic for twenty years—simply couldn't write. Then I cured myself. But it was too late to begin again." He spoke in gulps between mouthfuls of fish.
"How did you cure yourself?"
The man took no notice of the question, and went on:—
"And if I haven't written anything for twenty years, I'm still an author at heart. In fact, I've got something 'in the air' now. Oh! I've always had the literary temperament badly. Do you ever catch yourself watching instinctively for the characteristic phrase?"
"I'm afraid I don't quite know what you mean."
"Eh?"
Richard repeated what he had said, but Mr. Aked was absorbed in pouring out another glass of wine.
"I wish you'd tell me," Richard began, after a pause, "how you first began to write, or rather to get printed."
"My dear little friend, I can't tell you anything new. I wrote for several years and never sold a line. And for what peculiar reason, should you think? Simply because not a line was worth printing. Then my things began to be accepted. I sold a story first; I forget the title, but I remember there was a railway accident in it, and it happened to come before the editor of a magazine just when everyone was greatly excited about a railway smash in the West of England. I got thirty shillings for that."
"I think I should get on all right enough if only I could sell one thing." Richard sighed.