ot?'

'Pshaw! Pegasus won't let himself out on hire. I can't turn my sport
into my trade. When I find myself writing for the lucre of gain, the
whole spirit leaves me.'

'That is what you have been doing for some time.'

'No such thing. Literature was my holiday friend at first; and if she
put a gold piece or two into my pocket, it was not what I sought her
for. Then she came to my help to beguile what I thought was an interval
of waiting for the serious task of life. I wrote what I thought was
wanted. I sent it forth as my way of trying what service I could do
in my generation. But now, when I call it my profession, when I think
avowedly, what am I to get by it?--Faugh! the Muse is disgusted;
and when I go to church, I hang my head at "Lay not up to yourselves
treasures upon earth--"'

'A fine way you found of laying them up!'

'It proved the way to get them back.'

'I do not understand your objection. You had laid up that sum--your fair
earning.'

'There it was: it had accumulated without positive intention on my part;
I mean that I had of course taken my due, and not found occasion to
spend it. It is the writing solely for gain, with malice prepense
to save it,--that is the stumbling-block. I don't feel as if I was
justified in it, nay, I cannot do it; my ideas do not flow even on
matters wont to interest me most. It was all very well when waiting on
Arthur was an object; but after he was gone, I found it out. I could not
turn to writing, and if I did, out came things I was ashamed of. No! an
able-bodied man of five-and-thirty is meant for tougher work than review
and history-mongering! I have been teaching a ragged school, helping at
any charities that needed a hand; but it seems amateur work, and I want
to be in the stream of life again!'

'I will not say what most would--it was a pity you resigned your former
post.'

'No pity at all. That has made a pair of good folks very happy. If I had
kept certain hasty judgments to myself, I should not have been laid on
the shelf. It is no more than I deserve, and no doubt it is good for me
to be humbled and set aside; but work I will get of some kind! I
looked in at a great factory the other day, and longed to apply for a
superintendent's place, only I thought it might not be congruous with an
Honourable for a wife.'

'You don't mean to give up writing?'

'No, to make it my play. I feel like little Annie, when she called
herself puss without a corner. I have s