Chapter 3 ANENT.

We conversed awhile in whispers to avoid disturbing the other worshippers-I always feel like that in the British Museum-and finally abandoned our respective tasks and issued forth together. With a little persuasion I prevailed upon my companion to come and lunch with me, and we repaired to a rather old-fashioned and thoroughly British establishment close by, where the fare is solid and the "portions" generous.

My guest, after a brief effort at self-repression, fell upon the food in a fashion that told me a far more vivid tale of his present circumstances than the most lengthy explanation could have done. When he was full I gave him a cigar, and he leaned back in his padded arm-chair and surveyed me with the nearest approach to emotion that I have ever observed in the countenance of a Scot.

"I was wanting that," he remarked frankly, and he smiled largely upon me. He was looking less gaunt now, and the rugged lines of his face were tinged with a more healthy colour. He was a handsome youth, I noticed, with shrewd grey eyes and a chin that stood out like the ram of a battle-ship.

He told me all about himself, some of which has been set down here already. He had done well at Edinburgh University, and, having obtained his Arts degree, was on the point of settling down to study for the ministry-the be-all and end-all of the hope of a humble Scottish household-when disaster came tumbling upon his family. His brother David fell sick in his lungs, and the doctor prescribed a sojourn in a drier climate for at least a year.

The next part of the narrative was rather elliptical; but from the fact that money was immediately forthcoming to send David abroad, and that Robin had simultaneously given up his work in Edinburgh and returned home to help his father about the farm, I gathered that a life's ambition had been voluntarily sacrificed on the altar of family duty. Anyhow, when David returned, marvellously and mercifully restored to health, setting his younger brother free once more, two precious years had flown; so that Robin now found himself, at the age of twenty-three, faced with the alternative of making a fresh start in life or remaining on the farm at home, that most pathetic and forlorn of failures, a "stickit minister." The family exchequer had been depleted by David's illness, and Robin, rather than draw any further on the vanishing little store of pound-notes in the cupboard behind the kitchen chimney, determined to go to London and turn his education to some account.

He had arrived three years ago, with a barrel of salt herrings and a bag of meal; and from that time he had earned his own living-if it could be called a living.

"Once or twice," he said, "I have had an article taken by one of the big reviews; sometimes I get some odd reporting to do; and whiles I just have to write chatty paragraphs about celebrities for the snippety papers."

"Uphill work that, I should think."

"Uphill? Downhill! Man, it's degrading. Do you know what I was doing in that Museum this morning?"

"What?"

"Have you heard tell of a man they call Dean Ramsay?"

"Let me see-yes. He was a sort of Scottish Sidney Smith, wasn't he?"

"That is the man. Well, he collected most of the good stories in Scotland and put them in a book. I was copying a few of them out; and I shall father them on to folk that the public wants to hear about. I get a guinea a column for that."

"I know the sort of thing," I said. "'A good story is at present going the round of the clubs, concerning--'"

"Not 'concerning'-'anent'!"

"I beg your pardon-'anent a certain well-known but absent-minded Peer of the Realm.'"

"That's the stuff. You have the trick of it. Then sometimes I do bits of general information-computations as to the height of a column of the picture postcards sold in London in a year, and all that. Nobody can check figures of that kind, so the work is easy-and correspondingly ill-paid!" (I cannot reproduce the number of contemptuous r's that Robin threw into the adverb.)

"It's a fine useful place the Museum," he continued reflectively. "You were busy there this morning yourself. You would be collecting data anent-I mean about-the Island of Caerulea."

I sat up in surprise at this.

"How on earth--?" I began.

"Oh, I just jal-guessed it. You being the only member of his Majesty's Government in whom I have any personal interest, I have always followed your career closely. (You gave me your card, you'll mind.) Well, I saw you were having trouble with yon havering body Wuddiford-I once reported at one of his meetings: he's just a sweetie-wife in pince-nez-and when I saw you busy with an atlas and gazetteer I said to myself:-'He'll be getting up a few salient facts about the place, in order to appease the honourable member's insatiable thirst for knowledge-Toots, there I go again! Man, the journalese fairly soaks into the system. I doubt now if I could write out twenty lines of 'Paradise Lost' without cross-heading them!"

We finished our cigar over talk like this, and finally rose to go. Robin lingered upon the steps of the restaurant. I realised that he, being a Scotsman, was endeavouring to pump up the emotional gratitude which he felt sure that I, as an Englishman, would expect from a starving pauper who had lunched at my expense.

"I must thank you," he said at last, rather awkwardly, "for a most pleasant luncheon. And I should like fine," he added suddenly and impetuously, "to make out a précis for you on the subject of Caerulea. Never heed it yourself! Away home, and I'll send it to you to-morrow!"

An idea which had been maturing in my slow-moving brain for some time suddenly took a definite shape.

"It is extremely kind of you," I said. "I shall be delighted to leave the matter in your hands. But when you have made the précis, I wonder if you would be so good as to bring it to my house instead of sending it?"

I gave him my address, and we parted.

Robert Chalmers Fordyce arrived at my house next morning. He brought with him a budget of condensed but exhaustive information on the subject of Caerulea, the assimilation and ultimate discharge of which enabled me to score a signal victory over Mr Wuddiford of Upper Gumbtree, relegating that champion exploiter of mare's nests to a sphere of comparative inoffensiveness for quite a considerable time.

After reading the précis, I offered Robin the position of my Private Secretary, which he accepted politely but without servility or effusiveness. I handed him a quarter's salary in advance, gave him two days' holiday wherein to "make his arrangements"-Anglicè, to replenish his wardrobe-and we sealed the bargain with a glass of sherry and a biscuit apiece.

As he rose to go, Robin took from his pocket a folded manuscript.

"I see you have a good fire there," he said.

He stepped across to the hearth-rug and pitched the document into the heart of the flames, which began to lick it caressingly.

Presently the heat caused the crackling paper to unfold itself, and some of the writing became visible. Robert pointed, and I read-

"Pars about Personalities. A capital story is at present going the round of the clubs, anent--"

Here the flimsy manuscript burst into flame, and shot with a roar up the chimney.

I looked at Robert Chalmers Fordyce, and his face was the face of a man who has gone through deep waters, but feels the good solid rock beneath his feet at last.

He turned dumbly to me, and held out his hand.

The worst of these inarticulate and undemonstrative people is that they hurt you so.

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