On the following day during the luncheon hour, William Jordan, Junior, resigned the new volume to the care of Mr. M. Arnold Dodson.
“It has not taken you long to go through it,” said that gentleman, with a light of admiration in his eye, for he himself was prosecuting researches into the subject which were fraught with pain. “Let me see your notes, my son. They will help me a good deal.”
William Jordan, Junior, was fain to confess that he had not thought fit to commit to paper the result of his own researches.
“You had better do so at once,” said Mr. Dodson, whose stern countenance showed plainly that it would brook no trifling. “I want to take ’em to-night to the British Museum. They will help me no end.”
“B-b-but,” said the boy nervously, “it is n-n-not Homer.”
For the moment the attitude of horror adopted by Mr. M. Arnold Dodson seemed designed to suggest that the heavens were about to fall.
“Not Homer!” exclaimed Mr. Dodson. “Not Homer!”
He appeared to gather up each particular unit of his four feet ten inches, to lend emphasis to a reply which somehow refused to come forth.
“Not Homer!” he said after a pause whose length had ceased to make it dramatic. “Now look here, my son, I have only one word of advice to give you. You have only to let that come to the ears of Octavius, and you will be fired out of this old-established publishing house with one week’s salary and no character.”
In spite, however, of the total failure of this source, to which he looked chiefly for sustenance and inspiration in his arduous undertaking, Mr. Dodson was of far too considerable a mental and moral calibre to relinquish his self-imposed task. Thus early in his career he had adopted the saying of a compatriot, for he too, like so many of our national heroes, claimed the blood of Caledonia stern and wild, upon his mother’s side, “genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,” and had made it his own. Therefore in a crisis where one of other clay would have been daunted indeed, Mr. M. A. Dodson girt his loins like a veritable giant, and re-addressed himself to his labours with the greatest possible valour. Luney had failed him, as it was only reasonable to expect such a lunatic to do. It was a Napoleonic visage that crossed the threshold of a monumental building in Bloomsbury Square, immediately opposite the Hotel Thackeray, on three consecutive evenings at the hour of seven-thirty, and stayed there with its nose pinned to unaccustomed documents until it was turned out.