s
"copy." But though more than once a flaccid instinct would move us to
have out our pencils, we would only end by bunging our foolish mouths
with them, as if they were cigarettes, and then vaguely wondering
at them for that, being pencils, they would not draw.

By then we were so sinewless and demoralized that we could hear in the
distant strains of the European Concert nothing but an orchestra of
sweet sounds, and would have given ourselves away in any situation with a
pound of tea. Therefore, perhaps, it was well for us that, a peremptory
summons to town reaching me after seven days of comradeship with William,
I must make shift to collect my faculties with my effects, and return to
the more bracing climate of Fleet Street.

And here, you will note, begins the story of William Tyrwhitt, who would
linger yet a few days in that hanging garden of the south coast, and who
would pull himself together and collect matter for "copy."

He found a very good subject that first evening of his solitude.

I was to leave in the afternoon, and the morning we spent in aimlessly
rambling about the town. Towards mid-day, a slight shower drove us to
shelter under the green verandah of a house, standing up from the lower
fall of the High Street, that we had often observed in our wanderings.
This house--or rather houses, for it was a block of two--was very tall
and odd-looking, being all built of clean squares of a whitish granite;
and the double porch in the middle base--led up to by side-going steps
behind thin iron railings--roofed with green-painted zinc. In some of the
windows were jalousies, but the general aspect of the exterior was gaunt
and rigid; and the whole block bore a dismal, deserted look, as if it had
not been lived in for years.

Now we had taken refuge in the porch of that half that lay uppermost on
the slope; and here we noticed that, at a late date, the building was
seemingly in process of repair, painters' pots and brushes lying on a
window-sill, and a pair of steps showing within through the glass.

"They have gone to dinner," said I. "Supposing we seize the opportunity
to explore?"

We pushed at the door; it yielded. We entered, shut ourselves in, and
paused to the sound of our own footsteps echoing and laughing from
corners and high places. On the ground floor were two or three good-sized
rooms with modern grates, but cornices, chimney-pieces, embrasures finely
Jacobean. There were innumerable under-stair a