rooms unfurnished in Torrington Square where the houses
are smaller and less sumptuous than Mrs. Downey's. He had succeeded in
letting the little house in Ealing, where the abominable furniture
that had nearly cost so dear justified its existence by adding a small
sum to his income. He had benefited indirectly by Rankin's greatness;
for Rankin seldom contributed anything to _The Planet_ now beyond his
lively column once a week; and Rickman was frequently called on to
fill his place. _The Planet_ was good for at least a solid hundred a
year; _Metropolis_ (once it began to pay) for a solid two hundred and
fifty or more; other papers for small and varying sums. When he totted
it all up together he found that he was affluent. He could reckon on a
round four hundred all told. In Torrington Square, by the practice of
a little ingenious economy, he could easily live on a hundred and
twenty-five; so that by the end of the first year he should have saved
the considerable sum of two hundred and seventy-five pounds. At that
rate, in three years--no, in two years and a--well, in rather more
than two and a half years the thing would be done. By a little extra
exertion he might be able to reduce it to two years; to one, perhaps,
by a magnificent stroke of luck. Such luck, for instance, as a stage
success, a run of a hundred nights for the tragedy whose First Act he
was writing now.

That, of course, it would be madness to count on; but he had some
hopes from the sudden and extraordinary transformation of _The
Museion_.

Sudden enough, to the uninitiated, seeing that in September,
ninety-seven, the organ of philosophic criticism to all appearances
died, and that in October it burst into life again under a new cover
and a new title, Jewdwine himself sounding the trump of resurrection.
_The Museion's_ old contributors knew it no more; or failed to
recognise it in _Metropolis_. On the tinted cover there was no trace
of the familiar symbolic head-piece, so suggestive of an Ionic frieze,
but the new title in the broadest, boldest, blackest of type
proclaimed its almost wanton repudiation of the old tradition.

Jewdwine's first "concession to modernity," was a long leading review
of the "Art of Herbert Rankin." Herbert Rankin was so much amused with
it that it kept him quiet for at least three weeks in his playground
of _The Planet_. After such a handsome appreciation as that, he had to
wait a decent interval before "going for Jewdwine."