Yet there were moments, and they seemed to come more frequently as the
days went on, when I found myself wondering. Did I really want to give
up all this? The untidiness, the scratch meals, the nights with Julian?
And, when I was honest, I answered, No.

Somehow Margaret seemed out of place in this new world of mine.




CHAPTER 6

NEW YEAR'S EVE
_(James Orlebar Cloyster's narrative continued)_


The morning of New Year's Eve was a memorable one for me. My first
novel was accepted. Not an ambitious volume. It was rather short, and
the plot was not obtrusive. The sporting gentlemen who accepted it,
however--Messrs. Prodder and Way--seemed pleased with it; though, when
I suggested a sum in cash in advance of royalties, they displayed a
most embarrassing coyness--and also, as events turned out, good sense.

I carried the good news to Julian, whom I found, as usual, asleep in
his hammock. I had fallen into the habit of calling on him after my
_Orb_ work. He was generally sleepy when I arrived, at half-past
eleven, and while we talked I used to make his breakfast act as a
sort of early lunch for myself. He said that the people of the house
had begun by trying to make the arrival of his breakfast coincide with
the completion of his toilet; that this had proved so irksome that they