—Barwell.
I had never seen an omnibus. I did not know that it was necessary to take off my hat when entering a dwelling. I had never used a fork when eating. I had never been introduced to a lady; to me the approved form of introduction was a mystery. My boots had not been blackened for years. I wore my first collar when setting out for London. It nearly choked me. Since leaving Glenmornan I had rarely been inside an ordinary dwelling house. Most of the time I had lived under God's sky, the roof of a byre, and the tarred wooden covering of the navvies' shack at Kinlochleven. I had, it is true, seen the inside of a drawing-room and a dining-room—through the window. I lacked knowledge of most of the things which most people know and which really do not matter. I went to London a greenhorn gloriously green.
Outside Euston station I asked a man the way to Fleet Street. He inquired if I was going to walk or take an omnibus. Omnibus! I had never heard of an omnibus; he might have asked me if I intended to ride on a pterodactyl! I said that I was going to walk, and the stranger gave me several hints as to the direction which I should follow. Even if I had understood what he was saying, I am certain that I could not have remembered the directions. When he finished, he asked me for the price of his breakfast. This I understood, and gave him threepence, which pleased the man mightily.
It was funny that the first man accosted by me in London should ask for the price of a meal. The prospects of making a fortune looked poor at the moment.
I walked to Fleet Street, making inquiries from policemen on the way. This was safest, and I hadn't to pay for a meal when my questions were answered. By ten o'clock I found myself at the office of the Dawn, and there I met the editor.
The editor was a Frenchman, short of stature and breath. His figure was ridiculously rotund, and his little legs were so straight that they looked as if they were jointless. He would not have made much of a show on a ten-hour shift in the cutting of Kinlochleven, and though Fleet Street knows that he is one of the ablest editors in London I had not much respect for the man when I first saw him. He was busily engaged in looking through sheets of flimsy when I entered, and for a few minutes he did not take much notice of me. He called me Pim, asked me several questions about the navvies, my politics and writings. He looked annoyed when I said I was a socialist.
"A writer among navvies, and a navvy among writers; is that it?" asked the news-editor when I entered his office, a stuffy little place full of tobacco smoke. "You see that we have heard of you here. Going to try your hand at journalism now, are you? Feeling healthy and fit?"
He plied me with several questions relating to my past life, took no heed of my answers and, fumbling amongst a pile of papers, he drew out a type-written slip.
"I have a story for you," he said. "A fire broke out early this morning in a warehouse in Holborn. Go out and get all the facts relating to it and work the whole affair up well. If you do not know where Holborn is, make enquiries."
I met a third man, a young, clean-shaven, alert youth, in the passage outside the news-editor's door.