a week ago I had been a handy lad, dressed merely in shirt and
trousers, and engaged in planting out tomatoes? I arrived at the
corner of Mill Street, and turning on my heel walked away from it. I
wanted to try over, out loud, one or two such phrases as these:

'I've been dining with an artist friend in Macquarie Street!'--'I was
saying this afternoon to the editor of the _Chronicle_'--'I met some
delightful people at my friend Mr. Rawlence's studio this afternoon!'

But, upon the whole, there was a more subtle joy in the enunciation of
certain other remarks, supposed to come from somebody else:

'I met Mr. Freydon, Mr. Nicholas Freydon, you know, this afternoon. He
had looked in at Rawlence's studio in Macquarie Street. In fact, I
believe he stayed there to dinner before going on to his rooms at
North Shore. Rawlence certainly does get all the most interesting
people at his place. Landon, the painter, was deep in conversation
with Mr. Freydon. No, I don't know what Mr. Freydon does--some
secretarial appointment, I fancy. He's evidently a great friend of
Rawlence's.'

It is surprising that I can set these things down with no particular
sense of shame. I distinctly remember striding along the deserted
roads, speaking these absurdities aloud, in an only slightly subdued
conversational voice. My mood was one of remarkable exaltation. I
wonder if other young men have been equally mad!

'How d'ye do, Foster?' I would murmur airily as I swung round a
corner. 'Have you seen my new book?'; or, 'I noticed you published
that article of mine yesterday!' Presently I found myself in open,
scrub-covered country, and singing, quite loudly, the old sailor's
doggerel about its being a braw thing to be a 'clairk in an orfiss';
my real thought being that it was a braw thing to be Nicholas Freydon,
a clerk in an office, who was very soon to be something quite
otherwise.

I am not quite sure if this mood was typical of the happy madness of
youth. There may have been a lamentable kind of snobbery about it; I
dare say. I only know this was my mood; these were my apparently crazy
actions on that remote Sunday night. And, too, before getting into bed
that night--fortunately for himself, perhaps, poor Mr. Smith was
already asleep, and so safe from my loquacity--I carefully folded the
two magnificent rainbow-hued silk handkerchiefs which good Mrs.
Gabbitas had given me, and stowed them away at the very bottom of my
ancient carpet-bag.