“It seems to me,” said Stables, “you’ll want a whole number at this rate.”

“I shall want six columns, if I’m to do him any justice,” said Maddox, rising.  “Poor beggar, I expect he’s a bit off colour.  I shall go and look him up.”

At eight that evening he went and looked him up.  He found him in his room tranquilly reading.  Thinking of him as a man of genius who had courted failure and madly fooled away his chances, and seeing him sitting there, so detached, and so unconscious, Maddox was profoundly moved.  He had come with cursing and with consolation, with sympathy, with prophecy, with voluble belief.  But all he could say was, “It’s all right, Rickman.  It’s great, my son, it’s great.”

All the same he did not conceal his doubts as to the sort of reception Rickman had to expect.  That part of the business, he said, had been grossly mismanaged, and it was Rickman’s own fault.

“Look here,” he said, “what on earth possessed you to go and refuse that introduction to Hanson?  Was it just your cheek, or the devil’s own pride, or what?”

“Neither,” said Rickman, in a tone that pathetically intimated that he was worn out.  “I think it was chiefly my desire for peace and quiet.  I’m writing some more poems, you see.  I wouldn’t have refused it at any other time.”

“At any other time it wouldn’t have mattered so much.  You should be civil to the people who can help you.”

“I rather distrust that sort of civility myself.  I’ve seen too much of the dirty back stairs of Fleet Street.  I’ve tumbled over the miserable people who sit on them all day long, and I don’t mean anybody to tumble over me.  When I’ve got my best trousers on I want to keep them clean.”

“It’s a mistake,” said Maddox, “to wear your best trousers every day.”

“Perhaps.  But I mean to wear them.”

“Wear them by all means.  But you must make up your mind for a certain amount of wear and tear.  In your case it will probably be tear.”

“That’s my look-out.”

“Quite so.  I wouldn’t say anything if it was only Hanson you’d offended, but you shouldn’t alienate your friends.”

“My friends?”

“Yes.  Why, oh why, did you make that joke about Mackinnon’s head?”

“We were all making jokes about Mackinnon’s head.”

“Yes; but we weren’t all of us bringing out poems the next day.  Your position, Ricky-ticky, was one of peculiar delicacy—­and danger.”

“What does it matter?” said Rickman wearily.  “I can trust my friends to speak the truth about me.”

“Heaven bless you, Rickman, and may your spring suitings last for ever.”  He added, as Jewdwine had added, “Anyhow, this friend will do his level best for you.”

At which Rickman’s demon returned again.  “Don’t crack me up too much, Maddy.  You might do me harm.”

But before midnight Maddox burst into the office and flung himself on to his desk.