By eleven he had found his friend the publisher, in a dainty little place of business crammed with pottery, Rowlandsons, and books, and more like a curiosity-shop than a publishing-house, for the publisher proved an enthusiast in everything that was beautiful or curious, and had indeed taken to publishing from that rare motive in a publisher,—­the love of books, rather than the love of money.  He was aiming to make his little shop the rallying-point of all the young talent of the day, and as young talent has never too many publishers on the look-out for it, his task was not difficult, though it was one of those real services to literature which such publishers and booksellers have occasionally done in our literary history, with but scant acknowledgment.

Henry was pleased to find that he looked upon him to make one of his little band of youth; and as the publisher understood the art of encouragement, Henry already felt it had been worth while to come to London just to see him.  He knew the editor to whom Henry had a letter and volunteered him another.  The afternoon would be the best time; meanwhile, they must lunch together.  He smiled when Henry suggested the Cheshire Cheese.  Henry had a sort of vague idea that literary men could hardly think of taking their meals anywhere else.  There had been an attempt to bring it into fashion again, the publisher said; but it had come to nothing—­though he, for one, loved those old chop-houses, with their tankards, and their sanded floors.  So to the Cheshire Cheese they repaired, and drank to a long friendship in foaming pewters of porter.

“Alas!” said Henry, “we are fallen on smaller times.  Once it was ’the poet’s pint of port.’  Now we must be content with the poetaster’s half-a-pint of porter!”

“You must come to my rooms to-night,” said the publisher, “and be introduced to some of our young men.  I have one or two of our older critics coming too.”

Henry’s fortune was evidently made.

He found the editor in a dim back room at the top of a high building, so lost in a world of books and dust that at first Henry could hardly make him out, writing by a window with his back to the door.  Then an alert head turned round to him, and a rather peevish gesture bade him be seated, while the editor resumed his work.  This hardly came up to Henry’s magnificent dreams of the editorial dignity.  Perhaps he had a vague idea that editors lived in palaces, and sat on thrones.

Presently the editor put down his pen with an exclamation of satisfaction; and the first impression of peevishness vanished in the cordiality with which he now turned to his visitor.

“You must excuse my absorption.  It was a rather tough piece of proof-reading.  A subject I’m rather interested in,—­new Welsh dictionary.  Don’t suppose it’s in your line, eh, eh?”—­and the tall, spare man laughed a boyish laugh like a mischievous bird, and tossed his head at the jest.