"Forestalled!" exclaimed Ditchburn, spreading out his hands, and looking round upon them. "She's stolen a march upon us, after all, Charlie; and I made so sure of being first—didn't I, Purdue?"
"How are you, Jimmy?" Charlie had come forward, and was holding out his hand somewhat awkwardly. "Ditchburn told me he met you yesterday, and that you told him where you lived——"
"I'd forgotten," said Jimmy. "But I'm very glad to see you. It seems such ages since we met. Moira and I have had quite a long talk."
"There is a distinct smell of cooking," said Ditchburn, sniffing and looking about him. "If I put a name to it, I might almost say that it was bacon—and——"
"Quite impossible," broke in Jimmy, with a glance at the girl.
"It comes up from below," exclaimed Moira, with her eyes dancing. "I was really the first to find him," she went on, turning to Charlie. "You never saw anyone so surprised as he was when I came in."
"Is this where you do it all?" asked Charlie, coming across to the desk. (Jimmy hurriedly hid the packages that had come in on that and the previous day.) "And I suppose you grind away like one o'clock—eh?"
"Yes—the work's pretty hard at times," said Jimmy with another glance at the girl.
"He calls it hard work!" exclaimed Anthony Ditchburn, raising his hands and his eyes at the same moment. "This business of writing for the popular tastes; this stringing together of words that shall catch the vulgar ear, and bring a smile to vulgar lips; this writing of things that can have no possible connection with the classics—or with——"
"Never mind about that," broke in Charlie, "so long as you make money by it. That's the great thing—the making of the money. That's where independence comes in; no having to go to fathers to beg for shillings here or sovereigns there; there's the glorious feeling that you coin money by your pen. Jimmy—we must see more of you. It seems funny," he added, appealing to the others with a whimsical smile, "awfully funny to think that Jimmy—sober quiet old Jimmy—should have blossomed out like this."