ART AND MISERY
One Monday afternoon at the end of October—three months had gone by since the trial—Waymark carried his rents to St. John Street Road as usual.
"I'm going to Tottenham," said Mr. Woodstock. "You may as well come with me."
"By the by, I finished my novel the other day," Waymark said, as they drove northward.
"That's right. No doubt you're on your way to glory, as the hymn says."
Abraham was in good spirits. One would have said that he had grown younger of late. That heaviness and tendency to absent brooding which not long ago seemed to indicate the tightening grip of age, was disappearing; he was once more active and loud and full of his old interests.
"How's Casti?" Mr. Woodstock went on to ask.
"A good deal better, I think, but shaky. Of course things will be as bad as ever when his wife comes out of the hospital."
"Pity she can't come out heels first," muttered Abraham.
Waymark found that the purpose of their journey was to inspect a large vacant house, with a good garden and some fine trees about it. The old man wished for his opinion, and, by degrees, let it be known that he thought of buying the property.