‘My Work at New Wanley’ was written and published; Keene had the glory of revising the manuscript.  It made a pamphlet of thirty-two pages, and was in reality an autobiography.  It presented the ideal working man; the author stood as a type for ever of the noble possibilities inherent in his class.  Written of course in the first person, it contained passages of monumental self-satisfaction.  Adela, too, was mentioned; to her horror she found a glowing description of the work she had done among the women and children.  After reading that page she threw the pamphlet aside and hid her face in her hands.  She longed for the earth to cover her.

But the publication had no sale worth speaking of.  A hundred copies were got rid of at the Socialist centres, and a couple of hundred more when the price was reduced from twopence to a penny.  This would not satisfy Mutimer.  He took the remaining three hundred off the hands of the Union and sowed them broadcast over the East End, where already he was actively at work.  Then he had a thousand more struck off, and at every meeting which he held gave away numerous copies.  Keene wrote to suggest that in a new edition there should be a woodcut portrait of the author on the front.  Mutimer was delighted with the idea, and at once had it carried out.

Through. this winter and the spring that followed he worked hard.  It had become a necessity of his existence to hear his name on the lips of men, to be perpetually in evidence.  Adela saw that day by day his personal vanity grew more absorbing.  When he returned from a meeting he would occupy her for hours with a recitation of the speeches he had made, with a minute account of what others had said of him.  He succeeded in forming a new branch of the Union in Clerkenwell, and by contributing half the rent obtained a room for meetings.  In this branch he was King Mutimer.

In the meantime the suit against Rodman was carried through, it could have of course but one result.  Rodman was sold up; but the profit accruing to Hubert Eldon was trifling, for the costs were paid out of the estate, and it appeared that Rodman, making hay whilst the sun shone, had spent all but the whole of his means.  There remained the question whether he was making fraudulent concealments.  Mutimer was morally convinced that this was the case, and would vastly have enjoyed laying his former friend by the heels for the statutable six weeks, but satisfactory proofs were not to be obtained.  Through Mr. Yottle, Eldon expressed the desire that, as far as he was concerned, the matter might rest.  But it was by no means with pure zeal for justice that Mutimer had proceeded thus far.  He began the suit in anger, and, as is wont to be the case with litigants, grew more bitter as it went on.  The selling up of Rodman’s house was an occasion of joy to him; he went about singing and whistling.