“And why do you like it?” he asked.
“Oh,” I answered, “things come to you.”
“What things?”
“Oh, fancies,” I explained to him. “I am going to be an author when I grow up, and write books.”
He took my hand in his and shook it gravely, and then returned it to me. “I, too, am a writer of books,” he said.
And then I knew what had drawn me to him.
So for the first time I understood the joy of talking “shop” with a fellow craftsman. I told him my favourite authors—Scott, and Dumas, and Victor Hugo; and to my delight found they were his also; he agreeing with me that real stories were the best, stories in which people did things.
“I used to read silly stuff once,” I confessed, “Indian tales and that sort of thing, you know. But mamma said I'd never be able to write if I read that rubbish.”
“You will find it so all through life, Paul,” he replied. “The things that are nice are rarely good for us. And what do you read now?”
“I am reading Marlowe's Plays and De Quincey's Confessions just now,” I confided to him.