“And the university?”
Joyce did not reply, but Noakes went on: “Yes; one can see it. Somehow a man of acute observation can always tell. I remember your correcting me the other night when I spoke of Plato’s dramatic unities. I looked up the matter in the British Museum, and found that you were right in attributing them to Aristotle. As I said before, a man of your education ought to have no difficulty.”
“You might suggest something,” said Joyce, with a shade of irony.
“Authorship.”
“Are you an author?”
“With all due modesty, I may say that I am,” returned Noakes, gravely. “I don’t find it very remunerative, but I attribute that solely to the deficiencies in my education.”
“What do you write?” asked Joyce, interested in spite of himself in this odd, pathetic figure.
“I have adopted two branches of the profession—one, the literary advertisement; the other, popular fiction.”
He drew a halfpenny evening paper from his pocket, and, designating a half-column with his thumb, handed it to Joyce. It was headlined “Nihilism in Russia,” opened with an account of Siberian horrors, and ended, of course, with somebody’s pills.
“I always pride myself upon there being more literary quality in my work than is usually given to that class of thing,” he remarked complacently, while Joyce idly ran through the column. “And in my fiction I always try to keep the best models before me, Stevenson and Mayne Reid. I happen to have a copy of one of my latest works in my pocket. Perhaps it might interest you to glance through it. In return for the tobacco,—with the author’s compliments.”