"DEAR GEORGE,--It's better than a bat in the eye with a burnt
stick.--Yours affectionately, NUNKS"

As a boy George had at one period called his stepfather 'Nunks,' but he
had not used the appellation for years. He was touched now.

The newspapers had been hot after him, and he knew not how to defend
himself. His photograph was implored. He was waylaid by journalists
shabby and by journalists spruce, and the resulting interviews made him
squirm. He became a man of mark at Pickering's. Photographers entreated
him to sit free of charge. What irritated him in the whole vast affair
was the continual insistence upon his lack of years. Nobody seemed to be
interested in his design for the town hall; everybody had the air of
regarding him as a youthful prodigy, a performing animal. Personally he
did not consider that he was so very young. (Nevertheless he did
consider that he was a youthful prodigy. He could recall no architect in
history who had done what he had done at his age.) The town clerk who
travelled from the North to see him treated his age in a different
manner, the patronizing. He did not care for the town clerk. However,
the town clerk was atoned for by the chairman of the new town hall
sub-committee, a true human being named Soulter, with a terrific accent
and a taste for architecture, pictures, and music. Mr. Soulter, though
at least forty-five, treated George, without any appearance of effort,
as a coeval. George immediately liked him, and the mere existence of Mr.
Soulter had the effect of dissipating nearly all George's horrible
qualms and apprehensions about his own competence to face the
overwhelming job of erection. Mr. Soulter was most soothing in the
matter of specifications and contractors.

"So you've got into your new room," said John Orgreave.

Never before had he mounted to see George either in the new room or in
the old room. The simple fact of the presence there of one of the
partners in the historic firm below compensated for much teasing sarcasm
and half-veiled jealousy. It was a sign. It was a seal authenticating
renown.

"Yes."

"I only wanted to give you a message from Adela. The Ingram young woman
is staying with us----"

"Lois?" The name shot out of him unbidden.

"Yes. You're humbly supplicated to go to tea to-day. Four o'clock. Thank
God I've not forgotten it!"

George arrived fifty-five minutes late at Bedford Park. Throughout the
journey thither he kept repeating: "She said I