goblin was however quite
impervious to satire, and I left him endeavouring to draw my
attention to his wares in general, particularly to some zinc baths
which he seemed to think should form part of the equipment of a
tennis-player.

"Never before or since have I met a being of that order and degree of
creepiness. He was a nightmare of unmeaning idiocy. But some mention
ought to be made of the old man at the entrance to the tennis ground
who opened his mouth in parables on the subject of the fee for
playing there. He seemed to have been wound up to make only one
remark, 'It's sixpence.' Under these circumstances the attempt to
discover whether the sixpence covered a day's tennis or a week or
fifty years was rather baffling. At last I put down the sixpence.
This seemed to galvanise him into life. He looked at the clock, which
was indicating five past eleven and said, 'It's sixpence an hour--so
you'll be all right till two.' I fled screaming.

"Since then I have examined the town more carefully and feel the
presence of something nameless. There is a claw-curl in the sea-bent
trees, an eye-gleam in the dark flints in the wall that is not of
this world.

"When we set up a house, darling (honeysuckle porch, yew clipt hedge,
bees, poetry and eight shillings a week), I think you will have to do
the shopping. Particularly at Felixstowe. There was a great and
glorious man who said, 'Give us the luxuries of life and we will
dispense with the necessities.' That I think would be a splendid
motto to write (in letters of brown gold) over the porch of our
hypothetical home. There will be a sofa for you, for example, but no
chairs, for I prefer the floor. There will be a select store of
chocolate-creams (to make you do the Carp with) and the rest will be
bread and water. We will each retain a suit of evening dress for
great occasions, and at other times clothe ourselves in the skins of
wild beasts (how pretty you would look) which would fit your taste in
furs and be economical.

"I have sometimes thought it would be very fine to take an ordinary
house, a very poor, commonplace house in West Kensington, say, and
make it symbolic. Not artistic--Heaven--O Heaven forbid. My blood
boils when I think of the affronts put by knock-kneed pictorial
epicures on the strong, honest, ugly, patient shapes of necessary
things: the brave old bones of life. There are aesthetic pottering
prigs who can look on a saucepan without one tear of joy or s