"It was the greatest surprise of my life. When I could no longer doubt that the only people called Druce in the neighbourhood lived in the magnificent Elizabethan mansion, whose name was that of the supposed cottage from which you addressed your letter, I began to think the family kept a skeleton in one of the cupboards. In plain language——"
"You thought one of the members of the family must be a lunatic."
"Anyway, the champagne was first-class, the cigars were worth half-a-crown apiece," said Ingram, laughing.
"And when you had gone into the matter you thought that if I wasn't quite a lunatic, I was not far short of one for disagreeing with my father."
"Frankly, I did."
"You never really sympathised."
"I did—all the time I conceived of you as a Chatterton."
"A palace is worse than a garret," asserted Morgan, "under the conditions in which I lived."
"Bah! You know nothing about garrets. And, as I pointed out to you, even if, in spite of the competition, you did sell your soul to a publisher for fifty pounds a year, he'd take care to stick to it. You were hopelessly wrong in your ideas about getting your foot on the first rung of the ladder."
"I am ashamed of ever having had those ideas—of ever having been willing to suppress my individuality, if only temporarily, for the sake of living. It all ought to have ended then. Why did you advise me to go on?"