with his back to the foe. B. (a philanthropist) dies at 1 A.M.: which of these, speaking technically, would you call a creditable death?'
'The soldier's, because time was given to set it.'
'Quite right. Question Five: Have you ever known a newspaper which did not have the largest circulation in its district, and was not the most influential advertising medium?'
'Never.'
'Question Six: Mr. Gladstone rises to speak in the House of Commons at 2 A.M. What would be the sub-editor's probable remark on receiving the opening words of the speech, and how would he break the news to the editor? How would the editor be likely to take it?'
'I prefer,' said Rob, 'not to answer that question.'
'Well, Mr. Angus,' said Simms, tiring of the examination, 'you have passed with honours.'
The conversation turned to Rorrison's coming work in Egypt, and by and by Simms rose to go.
'Your stick, I suppose, Mr. Angus?' he said, taking Rob's thick staff from a corner.
'Yes,' answered Rob, 'it has only a heavy knob, you see, for a handle, and a doctor once told me that if I continued to press so heavily on it I might suffer from some disease in the palm of the hand.'
'I never heard of that,' said Simms, looking up for the first time since he entered the room. Then he added, 'You should get a stick like Rorrison's. It has a screw handle which he keeps loose, so that the slightest touch knocks it off. It is called the compliment-stick, because if Rorrison is in the company of ladies, he contrives to get them to hold it. This is in the hope that they will knock the handle off, when Rorrison bows and remarks exultingly that the stick is like its owner—when it came near them it lost its head. He has said that to fifteen ladies now, and has a great reputation for gallantry in consequence. Good-night.'
'Well, he did not get any copy out of me,' said Rob.
'Simms is a curious fellow,' Rorrison answered. 'Though you might not expect it, he has written some of the most pathetic things I ever read, but he wears his heart out of sight. Despite what he says, too, he is very jealous for the Press's good name. He seemed to take to you, so I should not wonder though he were to look you up here some night.'
'Here? How do you mean?'
'Why, this. I shall probably be away from London for some months, and as I must keep on my rooms, I don't see why you should not occupy them. The furniture is mine, and you would be rent free, except that the housekeeper expects a few shillings a week for looking after things. What do you think?'
Rob could have only one thought as he compared these comfortable chambers to his own bare room, and as Rorrison, who seemed to have taken a warm liking to him, pressed the point, arguing that as the rent must be paid at any rate the chambers were better occupied, he at last consented, on the understanding that they could come to some arrangement on Rorrison's return.
'It will please my father, too,' Rorrison added, 'to know that you are here. I always remember that had it not been for him you might never have gone on to the Press.'
They sat so late talking this matter over that Rob eventually stayed all night, Rorrison having in his bedroom a couch which many journalists had slept on.
Next morning the paper whose nickname is the Scalping Knife was served up with breakfast, and the first thing Rob saw in it was a leaderette about a disease generated in the palm of the hand by walking-sticks with heavy knobs for handles.
'I told you,' said Rorrison, 'that Simms would make his half-guinea out of you.'
When Rorrison went down to Simms's chambers later in the day, however, to say that he was leaving Rob tenant of his rooms, he was laughing at something else.
'All during breakfast,' he said to Simms, 'I noticed that Angus was preoccupied, and anxious to say something that he did not like to say. At last he blurted it out with a white face, and what do you think it was?'
Simms shook his head.
'Well,' said Rorrison, 'it was this. He has been accustomed to go down on his knees every night to say his prayers—as we used to do at school, but when he saw that I did not do it he did not like to do it either. I believe it troubled him all night, for he looked haggard when he rose.'
'He told you this?'
'Yes; he said he felt ashamed of himself,' said Rorrison, smiling. 'You must remember he is country-bred.'
'You were a good fellow, Rorrison,' said Simms gravely, 'to put him into your rooms, but I don't see what you are laughing at.'
'Why,' said Rorrison, taken aback, I thought you would see it in the same light.'
'Not I,' said Simms; 'but let me tell you this, I shall do what I can for him. I like your Angus.'
Chapter X.
The Wigwam
Rob had a tussle for it, but he managed to live down his first winter in London, and May-day saw him sufficiently prosperous and brazen to be able to go into restaurants and shout out 'Waiter.' After that nothing frightened him but barmaids.
For a time his chief struggle had been with his appetite, which tortured him when he went out in the afternoons. He wanted to dine out of a paper bag, but his legs were reluctant to carry him past a grill-room. At last a compromise was agreed upon. If he got a proof over night, he dined in state next day; if it was only his manuscript that was returned to him, he thought of dining later in the week. For a long time his appetite had the worse of it. It was then that he became so great an authority on penny buns. His striking appearance always brought the saleswomen to him promptly, and sometimes he blushed, and often he glared, as he gave his order. When they smiled he changed his shop.
There was one terrible month when he wrote from morning to night and did not make sixpence. He lived by selling his books, half a dozen at a time. Even on the last day of that black month he did not despair. When he wound up his watch at nights before going hungry to bed, he never remembered that it could be pawned. The very idea of entering a pawnshop never struck him. Many a time when his rejected articles came back he shook his fist in imagination at all the editors in London, and saw himself twisting their necks one by one. To think of a different death for each of them exercised his imagination and calmed his passion, and he wondered whether the murder of an editor was an indictable offence. When he did not have ten shillings, 'I will get on' cried Rob to himself. 'I'm not going to be starved out of a big town like this. I'll make my mark yet. Yes,' he roared, while the housekeeper at the other side of the door quaked to hear him, 'I will get on; I'm not going to be beaten.' He was waving his arms fiercely, when the housekeeper knocked. 'Come in,' said Rob, subsiding meekly into his chair. Before company he seemed to be without passion, but they should have seen him when he was alone. One night he dreamt that he saw all the editors in London being conveyed (in a row) to the hospital on stretchers. A gratified smile lit up his face as he slept, and his arm, going out suddenly to tip one of the stretchers over, hit against a chair. Rob jumped out of bed and kicked the chair round the room. By and by, when his articles were occasionally used, he told his proofs that the editors were capital fellows.
The only acquaintances he made were with
