ys to the thirtieth. Dicky said nothing about any
willingness to renew the bill. What did it matter? Dicky would renew
it, Dicky must renew it; he felt that there was force in him to compel
Dicky to renew it. He went out and bought a paper with the price of a
meal of milk (he couldn't pawn his good clothes; their assistance was
too valuable in interviews with possible employers). He found the
advertisement of an Exeter bookseller in want of a foreman and expert
cataloguer at a salary of ninety pounds. He answered it by return. In
the list of his credentials he mentioned that he had catalogued the
Harden library (a feat, as he knew, sufficient to constitute him a
celebrity in the eyes of the Exeter man). He added that if the
bookseller felt inclined to consider his application he would be
obliged by a wire, as he had several other situations in view.

The bookseller wired engaging him for six months. The same day came a
cheque for ten pounds from _The Planet_, the honorarium for the Elegy.
He sent the ten pounds to Dicky at once (by way of showing what he
could do) with a curt note informing him of his appointment and
requesting a renewal for three months, by which time his salary would
cover the remainder still owing.

Feeling that no further intellectual efforts were now required of him
he went out to feed on the fresh air. As he crossed the landing an
odour of hot pottage came to meet him. Through the ever-open door he
caught a glimpse of a woman's form throned, as it were, above clouds
of curling steam. A voice went out, hoarse with a supreme emotion.

"Come in, you there, and 'ave a snack, wontcher?" it said.

"No, thank you," he answered.

"Garn then. I'll snack yer for a ----y fool!"

And from the peaceableness of the reply he gathered that this time the
lady was not soliciting patronage but conferring it.

He was no longer hungry, no longer weighed upon by his exhausted body.
A great restlessness had seized it, a desire to walk, to walk on and
on without stopping. The young day had lured him into the Regent's
Park. So gentle was the weather that, but for bare branches and
blanched sky, it might have been a day in Spring. As he walked he
experienced sensations of indescribable delicacy and lightness, he saw
ahead of him pellucid golden vistas of metaphysical splendour, he
skimmed over fields of elastic air with the ease and ecstasy of a
blessed spirit.

When he came in he found that the experience prolong