’A little girl at the greengrocer’s hard by?  She sold me apples; rather pretty,’ said Gower.

’A fine grown girl now—­Madge Winch; a comely wench she is.  It breaks her sister Sarah’s heart.  They both manage the little shop; they make it prosper in a small way; enough, and what need they more?  Then Christopher Ines has on one of his matches.  Madge drives her cart out, if it ’s near town.  She’s off down into Kent to-day by coach, Sarah tells me.  A great nobleman patronizes Christopher; a Lord Fleetwood, a lord of wealth.  And he must be thoughtful for these people:  he sent Sarah word that Christopher should not touch drink.  You may remember a butcher Ines in the street next to us.  Christopher was a wild lad, always at “best man” with every boy he met:  went to sea—­ran away.  He returned a pugilist.  The girl will be nursing him now.  I have spoken to her of him; and I trust to her; but I mourn her attachment to the man who drinks.’

‘The lord’s name?’ said Gower.

’Lord Fleetwood, Sarah named him.  And so it pleases him to spend his money!’

’He has other tastes.  I know something of him, sir.  He promises to be a patron of Literature as well.  His mother was a South Wales woman.’

‘Could he be persuaded to publish a grand edition of the Triads?’ Mr. Woodseer said at once.

‘No man more likely.’

‘If you see him, suggest it.’

’Very little chance of my meeting him again.  But those Triads!  They’re in our blood.  They spring to tie knots in the head.  They push me to condense my thoughts to a tight ball.  They were good for primitive times:  but they—­or the trick of the mind engendered by them—­trip my steps along the lines of composition.  I produce pellets instead of flowing sheets.  It’ll come right.  At present I ’m so bent to pick and perfect, polish my phrase, that I lose my survey.  As a consequence, my vocabulary falters.’

‘Ah,’ Mr. Woodseer breathed and smote.  ’This Literature is to be your profession for the means of living?’

’Nothing else.  And I’m so low down in the market way of it, that I could not count on twenty pounds per annum.  Fifty would give me standing, an independent fifty.’

‘To whom are you crying, Gower?’

‘Not to gamble, you may be sure.’

‘You have a home.’

’Good work of the head wants an easy conscience.  I’ve too much of you in me for a comfortable pensioner.’

’Or is it not, that you have been living the gentleman out there, with just a holiday title to it?’

Gower was hit by his father’s thrust.  ’I shall feel myself a pieman’s chuckpenny as long as I’m unproductive, now I ’ve come back and have to own to a home,’ he said.

Tea brought in by Mrs. Mary Jones rather brightened him until he considered that the enlivenment was due to a purchase by money, of which he was incapable, and he rejected it, like an honourable man.  Simultaneously, the state of depression threw critic shades on a prized sentence or two among his recent confections.  It was rejected for the best of reasons and the most discomforting:  because it racked our English; signifying, that he had not yet learnt the right use of his weapons.