ty tendency, no doubt) I loftily waved aside
all suggestions of coffee in the lounge, and made my way to the
street, with the air of one who found luncheon a rather annoying
interruption in his management of great affairs.

'Now if you had as much enterprise and resourcefulness as--as a
bandicoot,' I told myself, passing down the Thames Embankment, 'you
would have entered into conversation with A----, and by this time he
would be pressing you to write articles for him. Instead of that,
you'll have to content yourself with dry bread to-night and to-morrow,
my friend.'

But I did not altogether regret that bread and soup luncheon, after
all. It was an adventure of sorts, and quite a streak of colour in its
way, across the drab background of South Tottenham days.

There were times when the spirit of revolt filled my very soul, and
all life seemed black or red in my eyes. But I do not recall any day
of panic or suggested surrender. On one day of revolt, when I told
myself that this slum life in London was too horrible for a
self-respecting dingo, let alone a man, I buttoned up my coat and
walked with angry haste all the way to Epping Forest. In that noble
breathing-place I raged to and fro under trees and through scrub,
delighting in the prickly caress of brambles, and pausing in
breathless ecstasy to watch rabbits at play in a dim, leafy glade.
Fully twelve miles I must have walked, and then, healed and tamed, but
somewhat faint from unwonted exercise and wonted lack of good food, I
sat down in a little arbour and wolfishly devoured just as much as I
could get in the form of a ninepenny tea. I fear there can have been
no margin of profit for the good woman who served me.

At that period my digestive faculties still were holding up
miraculously, or my sufferings on the homeward tramp would have been
acute. As a fact I reached home in rare spirits, and almost--so cheery
was I--cancelled the notice I had given that morning of my intention
to vacate the current garret. But the smell of the house smiting my
forest freshness as I stepped over the boards, jammed in its threshold
to keep crawling children in, saved me from that indiscretion. There
were fewer drunkards, less fighting, and not many more insects in that
house than in most of my places of residence; but the smell of it I
shall never, never forget. In that respect it was the vilest in a vile
series of slum dwellings, and many and many a time had caused me to
revil