"She might have married you."
"Maybe; but the worst of it is I've got to work—tuck up my sleeves and work."
"What at?"
"Novel-writing."
"Well, that's easy enough," said Billy cheerfully. "You can easily get some literary cove to do the writing and stick your name to it, and we'll all buy your books, my boy, we'll all buy your books; not that I ever read books much, but I'll buy 'em if you write 'em. Come into Jubber's."
Arm-in-arm they entered Long's Hotel, where Billy resided, and over a mutual whisky-and-soda they forgot books and discussed horses; they lunched together and discussed dogs, girls, and mutual friends. It was like old times again, but over the liqueurs and over the cigarette-smoke suddenly appeared to Bobby the vision of Tozer. He said good-bye to the affluent one, and departed. "I've got to work," said Bobby.
His momentary lapse from the direction of the target only served to pull him together, and it seemed, now, as though the luncheon and the lapse had made things easier. He told himself if he hadn't brains enough to scare up some sort of plot for a six-shilling novel he had better drown himself. If he couldn't do what hundreds of people with half his knowledge of the world and ability were doing he would be a mug of the very first water.
If anything depressed him it was the horrible and futile assurance of Billy that "his friends would buy his books." He went to Pactolus Mansions and ordered his luggage to be sent to the Albany, then he changed his sovereign and bought a cigar, then an omnibus gave him an inspiration. He would get on top of an omnibus and in that cool and airy position do a bit of thinking.
It was not an original idea; he had read, or heard, of a famous author who thought out his plots on the tops of omnibuses—but it was an idea. He clambered on to the top of an eastward-going bus, and, behind a fat lady with bugles on her bonnet, tried to compose his mind.
Why not make a story about—Billy? People liked reading of the aristocracy, and Billy was a character in his way and had many stories attached to him. He could start the book grandly, simply out of remembered visions of Lord William Tottenham in his gayest moods. L. W. T. emptying bottles of cliquot into a grand piano at Oxford. Oxford—ay, grander and grander—the book should begin at Oxford with a fresh and vigorous picture of University life. Tozer would come in, and a host of others; then, after Oxford, there was the rub.