doesn't make any
difference to him that I live in a garret like this; I'm a man of
education, and he can separate this fact from my surroundings.'

'Biffen, why don't you get some decent position? Surely you might.'

'What position? No school would take me; I have neither credentials
nor conventional clothing. For the same reason I couldn't get a private
tutorship in a rich family. No, no; it's all right. I keep myself alive,
and I get on with my work.--By-the-bye, I've decided to write a book
called "Mr Bailey, Grocer."'

'What's the idea?'

'An objectionable word, that. Better say: "What's the reality?" Well, Mr
Bailey is a grocer in a little street by here. I have dealt with him
for a long time, and as he's a talkative fellow I've come to know a good
deal about him and his history. He's fond of talking about the struggle
he had in his first year of business. He had no money of his own, but
he married a woman who had saved forty-five pounds out of a cat's-meat
business. You should see that woman! A big, coarse, squinting creature;
at the time of the marriage she was a widow and forty-two years old.
Now I'm going to tell the true story of Mr Bailey's marriage and of his
progress as a grocer. It'll be a great book--a great book!'

He walked up and down the room, fervid with his conception.

'There'll be nothing bestial in it, you know. The decently ignoble--as
I've so often said. The thing'll take me a year at least. I shall do
it slowly, lovingly. One volume, of course; the length of the ordinary
French novel. There's something fine in the title, don't you think? "Mr
Bailey, Grocer"!'

'I envy you, old fellow,' said Reardon, sighing. 'You have the right
fire in you; you have zeal and energy. Well, what do you think I have
decided to do?'

'I should like to hear.'

Reardon gave an account of his project. The other listened gravely,
seated across a chair with his arms on the back.

'Your wife is in agreement with this?'

'Oh yes.' He could not bring himself to say that Amy had suggested it.
'She has great hopes that the change will be just what I need.'

'I should say so too--if you were going to rest. But if you have to set
to work at once it seems to me very doubtful.'

'Never mind. For Heaven's sake don't discourage me! If this fails I
think--upon my soul, I think I shall kill myself.'

'Pooh!' exclaimed Biffen, gently. 'With a wife like yours?'

'Just because of that.'

'No, no; there'll be some w