As for Fox, I seemed to suit him—­I don’t in the least know why.  No doubt he knew me better than I knew myself.  He used to get hold of me whilst I was hanging about the office on the chance of engaging space for Mrs. Hartly, and he used to utilise me for the ignoblest things.  I saw men for him, scribbled notes for him, abused people through the telephone, and wrote articles.  Of course, there were the pickings.

I never understood Fox—­not in the least, not more than I understood Mrs. Hartly.  He had the mannerisms of the most incredible vulgarian and had, apparently, the point of view of a pig.  But there was something else that obscured all that, that forced one to call him a wonderful man.  Everyone called him that.  He used to say that he knew what he wanted and that he got it, and that was true, too.  I didn’t in the least want to do his odd jobs, even for the ensuing pickings, and I didn’t want to be hail-fellow with him.  But I did them and I was, without even realising that it was distasteful to me.  It was probably the same with everybody else.

I used to have an idea that I was going to reform him; that one day I should make him convert the Hour into an asylum for writers of merit.  He used to let me have my own way sometimes—­just often enough to keep my conscience from inconveniencing me.  He let me present Lea with an occasional column and a half; and once he promised me that one day he would allow me to get the atmosphere of Arthur Edwards, the novelist.

Then there was Churchill and the Life of Cromwell that progressed slowly.  The experiment succeeded well enough, as I grew less domineering and he less embarrassed.  Toward the end I seemed to have become a familiar inmate of his house.  I used to go down with him on Saturday afternoons and we talked things over in the train.  It was, to an idler like myself, wonderful the way that essential idler’s days were cut out and fitted in like the squares of a child’s puzzle; little passages of work of one kind fitting into quite unrelated passages of something else.  He did it well, too, without the remotest semblance of hurry.

I suppose that actually the motive power was his aunt.  People used to say so, but it did not appear on the surface to anyone in close contact with the man; or it appeared only in very small things.  We used to work in a tall, dark, pleasant room, book-lined, and giving on to a lawn that was always an asylum for furtive thrushes.  Miss Churchill, as a rule, sat half forgotten near the window, with the light falling over her shoulder.  She was always very absorbed in papers; seemed to be spending laborious days in answering letters, in evolving reports.  Occasionally she addressed a question to her nephew, occasionally received guests that came informally but could not be refused admittance.  Once it was a semi-royal personage, once the Duc de Mersch, my reputed employer.