He had arrived three years ago, with a barrel of salt herrings and a bag of meal; and from that time he had earned his own living—if it could be called a living.
"Once or twice," he said, "I have had an article taken by one of the big reviews; sometimes I get some odd reporting to do; and whiles I just have to write chatty paragraphs about celebrities for the snippety papers."
"Uphill work that, I should think."
"Uphill? Downhill! Man, it's degrading. Do you know what I was doing in that Museum this morning?"
"What?"
"Have you heard tell of a man they call Dean Ramsay?"
"Let me see—yes. He was a sort of Scottish Sidney Smith, wasn't he?"
"That is the man. Well, he collected most of the good stories in Scotland and put them in a book. I was copying a few of them out; and I shall father them on to folk that the public wants to hear about. I get a guinea a column for that."
"I know the sort of thing," I said. "'A good story is at present going the round of the clubs, concerning——'"
"Not 'concerning'—'anent'!"