Towards one in the morning, our host asked Syrige and me to sup
with him. We foraged in the pantry, and found some eggs, but
nothing in which to cook them. Our host said that he would try a
new trick, of boiling eggs in a paper box. We were scornful about
it, thinking it impossible. He brought out paper, made a box (with
some difficulty,) filled it with water, and boiled an egg in it.
Synge watched the task with the most keen interest. "You've done
it," he said. "I never thought you would." Afterwards he examined
the paper box. I suppose he planned to make one in Aran in the
summer. While we supped, our host chaffed us both for choosing to
eat cold meats when we might have had nice hot eggs. It was at
this supper that I first came to know the man.

When we got into the street, we found that we lodged within a few
minutes' walk of each other. We walked together to our lodgings.
He said that he had been for a time in Aran, that he had taken
some photographs there, and that he would be pleased to show them
to me, if I would call upon him later in the morning. He said that
he had just come to London from Paris, and that he found
Bloomsbury strange after the Quartier Latin. He was puzzled by the
talk of the clever young men from Oxford. "That's a queer way to
talk. They all talk like that. I wonder what makes them talk like
that? I suppose they're always stewing over dead things."

Synge lodged in a front room on the second floor of No. 4, Handel
Street, Bloomsbury. It was a quiet house in a quiet, out-of-the-
way street. His room there was always very clean and tidy. The
people made him very comfortable. Afterwards, in 1907, during his
last visit to London, he lodged there again, in the same room. I
called upon him there in the afternoon of the day on which I last