e river.

The Eminent Novelist met us at the gate. We had expected to find the
author of _Angela Rivers_ and _The Garden of Desire_ a pale aesthetic
type (we have a way of expecting the wrong thing in our interviews). We
could not resist a shock of surprise (indeed we seldom do) at finding
him a burly out-of-door man weighting, as he himself told us, a hundred
stone in his stockinged feet (we think he said stone).

He shook hands cordially.

"Come and see my pigs," he said.

"We wanted to ask you," we began, as we went down the walk, "something
about your books."

"Let's look at the pigs first," he said. "Are you anything of a pig
man?"

We are always anxious in our interviews to be all things to all men. But
we were compelled to admit that we were not much of a pig man.

"Ah," said the Great Novelist, "perhaps you are more of a dog man?"

"Not altogether a dog man," we answered.

"Anything of a bee man?" he asked.

"Something," we said (we were once stung by a bee).

"Ah," he said, "you shall have a go at the beehives, then, right away?"

We assured him that we were willing to postpone a go at the beehives
till later.

"Come along, then, to the styes," said the Great Novelist, and he added,
"Perhaps you're not much of a breeder."

We blushed. We thought of the five little faces around the table for
which we provide food by writing our interviews.

"No," we said, "we were not much of a breeder."

"Now then," said the Great Novelist as we reached our goal, "how do you
like this stye?"

"Very much indeed," we said.

"I've put in a new tile draining--my own plan. You notice how sweet it
keeps the stye."

We had not noticed this.

"I am afraid," said the Novelist, "that the pigs are all asleep inside."

We begged him on no account to waken them. He offered to open the little
door at the side and let us crawl in. We insisted that we could not
think of intruding.

"What we would like," we said, "is to hear something of your methods
of work in novel writing." We said this with very peculiar conviction.
Quite apart from the immediate purposes of our interview, we have always
been most anxious to know by what process novels are written. If we
could get to know this, we would write one ourselves.

"Come and see my bulls first," said the Novelist. "I've got a couple of
young bulls here in the paddock that will interest you."

We felt sure that they would.

He led us to a little green fence. Inside