"I wouldn't," said Peter gravely. "Retirement is a rotten state for a professional man to enter into. Sudden dislocation of his routine, nothing to occupy his mind—result, he generally pegs out in a couple of years. I've noticed it scores of times."
"It's all very well for you literary fellows to talk," protested Entwistle. "You can never complain of overwork."
"There you are mistaken," said Barcroft. "I admit I slack off a little now, but at one time I dare not. It may seem easy for a fellow to knock off a couple of thousand words a day, but try it for a year and see how it feels. Remember, it isn't the actual work of putting pen to paper. One has to think, and think jolly hard. Do you remember some years ago a man tried to cover a thousand miles in a thousand consecutive hours? One mile an hour day and night. Doesn't seem much, but imagine what it means."
"You seem to have done pretty well out of it," remarked Entwistle.
"It took some doing," confessed Peter. "I can recall a certain Christmas Eve when, with two other congenial spirits, I sat in a fireless attic in Town. We were literally on our beam ends—too jolly proud to sample the fatted calf that awaited us in our respective parents' homes. I think we had sevenpence halfpenny between us."
"Sounds cheerful."
"Precisely. However, being fresh-air fiends even in those days, we had left the window open——"
"And some philanthrophic soul threw in a big parcel of provender?"
"Into the attic window of a six-storeyed house? Hardly. No; a pigeon flew in. It never flew out again, for in less than twenty minutes it was roasting in front of the landlady's kitchen fire. That same evening one of my companions in distress received an unexpected guinea for a pot-boiler, and there was no longer famine in the land."
The two men had now climbed the hill and were outside the front door of The Croft. The house was considerably smaller than Ladybird Fold, although built on the same principle. At one time it had been a farm house, but most of the outbuildings had been removed. Standing on higher ground it commanded even a more extensive outlook than that enjoyed by the Barcrofts; in fact, almost the whole of Barborough could be discerned.