He shook his head. ‘I never read English; I have read none for ten years,’ he said. ‘I like to get things at first-hand; so that if I want to know anything, I go to the Germans; if I want to feel anything, to the French. But what have you here?’ taking up a book. It was a volume of Dawson’s last novel, which had been sent over to me.
‘Hum!’ he cried. ‘Is this a good author?’
‘A popular one,’ I replied, modestly remembering the share I had, if not in his fame, at least in his fortunes.
‘I’ll take this, if you’ll let me have it,’ he said.
‘Take the three volumes.’
‘No; I’ll only take one. I don’t suppose I shall get through the first chapter.’
Next day, however, he came back to borrow the second volume, and the day after the third. I felt a little flattered that a work in which I had taken so good a share had the power to captivate such a dour and sullen soul.
‘What do you think of it?’ I said, when he brought back the last volume. He was standing leaning against the doorway with his stick under his arm. He would never sit down; he seemed to have made a vow against it.
‘Think of it?’ he cried. ‘Why, it is my own—my own story!’
‘Yours!’ I said astonished. ‘How do you make that out?’