The Hullock family, it is necessary to say here, consisted of my partner, his two parents, a maiden aunt, and a sister. Mr Hullock, a good and worthy little man, who had not had all the advantages of education which his son possessed, was a retired coal merchant, spending the afternoon of his days at Saint Leonards.
His wife, as kind and motherly as she was tall and portly, treated me like her own son from the moment I entered her house.
And with her to look after me, and Alice to fall in love with, and Harry to collaborate with, I was about as comfortable as a restless genius could be—that is, I should have been so had it not been for the damp and frigid influence of Aunt Sarah, who sympathised neither with genius nor youth, and certainly not with the two in combination. Twenty times a day she grieved me by calling me “silly little boy,” and twenty times a day she exasperated me by reminding Harry, and, through him, me, that “little boys should be seen and not heard.”
However, we decided to ignore this uncongenial influence, and bury our sorrows in “Our Novel.”
“Tell you what,” said Harry, as we walked on the pier the first evening, “we ought to look sharp and get our plot.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to settle on the characters and get the plot afterwards?”
“All serene!” said Harry; “can you suggest any one for a hero?”
Harry said this in a half significant, half off-hand manner, which made it evident to me he expected I should at once nominate him.
But, in my judgment, Harry hardly possessed all the qualifications necessary for the hero of our novel. So I replied, half significantly, half off-handedly too—
“Hadn’t you better think of some one?”