The fire burned bright in the little dusky smoking-room, lighted by one oil-lamp. Mr. Heritage flung himself into a chair, stretched his long legs and lit a pipe.
"You like reading?" he asked. "What sort? Any use for poetry?"
"Plenty," said Dickson. "I've aye been fond of learning it up and repeating it to myself when I had nothing to do. In church and waiting on trains, like. It used to be Tennyson, but now it's more Browning. I can say a lot of Browning."
The other screwed his face into an expression of disgust. "I know the stuff. 'Damask cheeks and dewy sister eyelids.' Or else the Ercles vein—'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.' No good, Mr. McCunn. All back numbers. Poetry's not a thing of pretty round phrases or noisy invocations. It's life itself, with the tang of the raw world in it—not a sweetmeat for middle-class women in parlours."
"Are you a poet, Mr. Heritage?"
"No, Dogson, I'm a paper-maker."
This was a new view to Mr. McCunn. "I just once knew a paper-maker," he observed reflectively. "They called him Tosh. He drank a bit."
"Well, I don't drink," said the other. "I'm a paper-maker, but that's for my bread and butter. Some day for my own sake I may be a poet."
"Have you published anything?"
The eager admiration in Dickson's tone gratified Mr. Heritage. He drew from his pocket a slim book. "My firstfruits," he said, rather shyly.