answered,
then as Kelly dived into his pocket and produced a cheque book, he
flushed quickly, "No, old man. If I want that, I'll come to you; but I
don't want it yet. Thanks very much, though."

Kelly shrugged his shoulders. "You're quite a change. It's generally the
other way round. Men ask me for money, and I do the refusing." Usually,
his expression was hard, almost cynical, but as he looked at Jimmy it
softened, and he seemed to grow years younger. He was back again on the
China Coast, in the days when success was a thing of the future, and
therefore greatly to be prized. "You'll do well, Grierson, you've got it
in you, just as I had. And, after all, London is the one place, the only
market worth bringing your stuff to."

"I will admit I had thought of writing, but I know how hard it is to get
a start, and----" Jimmy began; but Kelly cut him short.

"Rot! It's hard for the ruck, for the ninety and nine, who, after all,
ought to find it impossible, not merely hard. But it's different for you
and me, Jimmy Grierson, because we're not in the ruck. Of course you'll
write, for it's in you, and you would be a fool to try anything else.
You won't jump into a job right away; and you'll have to fight as I
fought. I started as a sub-editor on three pounds a week, correcting the
grammar in the copy of men who were getting five times that amount--but
I can get you a start of sorts, right away. Come around now to the
_Record_ office, and I'll introduce you to Dodgson, the editor, a
perfectly uninspired person, who ought to have been a grocer's assistant
and have sung in a chapel choir. But he has the grace to realise his
limitations, and take my advice. It will mean two guineas every now and
then for a Page Four article--a thousand words, you know."

Jimmy finished off his drink and stood up. He was beginning to
understand that, after all, there was an element of sane, cool common
sense behind Kelly's blatant self-assertiveness. It might irritate what
the other called the "ruck," but it also cowed them, and they got out of
his path; moreover, there was always the undeniable fact that the man
had genius of no common order. Jimmy had been perfectly sincere when he
said he had not come home intending to make his living by his pen. He
had thought of doing so, certainly, or rather had longed to do so; but,
like most amateurs, he had been deterred by what he had heard of the
difficulties, and had put the idea on one side. Now, howe