"How do you know I have had one?" Jimmy demanded.
The old man smiled. "You've as good as told me so, a score of times. Bad things family quarrels. After all, your relations are your own flesh and blood."
Jimmy did not answer; latterly, he had begun to realise the truth of what the other was saying; and he knew more than ever the value of peace.
For a little while they smoked in silence, then, "How did you happen to light on this town in the first instance?" the doctor asked.
"I hardly know myself," Jimmy answered. "I wanted some quiet place, and someone—I have never been able to remember who it was—had once mentioned it to me as the ideal spot. The name had stuck in my memory, so I came down here on chance and liked it from the first. I must say, though, I've found it dull at times."
"No place is dull when you know it well enough," the old man retorted. "Yes, I mean it. You, as a writer, ought to understand that. It's only dull if you make it so for yourself by being out of sympathy with its people.... How's the book getting on?"
"Pretty well, I believe. The publishers say they're quite satisfied with it for a first novel. One doesn't expect to make a big splash at the start."
"Some never make a splash at all, even though they do good work. I knew one." The doctor shook his head sadly. "He lived in this town, only a few doors from here. He used to write scientific books, and was admitted to be the best man in England on his own subject; yet he got more and more hard up all the time. I don't know what he and his daughter really did live on for the last year or two. It ended in something very like a tragedy. Ah, it was a bad business, a terrible business," and he sighed heavily.
Jimmy's lips seemed suddenly to have become dry and hard; but his voice was almost normal as he asked, "What was it, doctor?"
The old man began to fill a pipe with rather exaggerated care. "It was the daughter," he answered, without looking up. "She was a sweet girl, the best, most unselfish girl I ever knew; but curiously young in many ways, dangerously young—you understand? She had been brought up alone with him—no woman to tell her things. That's bad. Confound it all, sir,"—he raised his voice in a sudden explosion of wrath,—"parents have no right to keep their girls in ignorance. It's criminal negligence; at least it was in this case. They were desperately poor, and he was dying; wanted all sorts of things." He paused again and made a show of lighting his pipe, but the match burnt out ineffectually, then he went on. "They hadn't a shilling, and none of the tradesmen would trust them. And a man, a young scoundrel belonging to this very town, offered her ten pounds to go away with him for a couple of days, showed her the gold.... What was that?" he demanded quickly as Jimmy's pipe stem snapped suddenly in his hands.