It's a slow job for a young man, and it
wasn't my choice of profession.'
'Which was?'
He actually blushed. 'I want to write books,' he said.
'And what better chance could you ask?' I cried. 'Man, I've often
thought that an innkeeper would make the best story-teller in the world.'
'Not now,' he said eagerly. 'Maybe in the old days when you had
pilgrims and ballad-makers and highwaymen and mail-coaches on
the road. But not now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of
fat women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two in the
spring, and the shooting tenants in August. There is not much
material to be got out of that. I want to see life, to travel the world,
and write things like Kipling and Conrad. But the most I've done
yet is to get some verses printed in CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL.'
I looked at the inn standing golden in the sunset against the
brown hills.
'I've knocked a bit about the world, and I wouldn't despise such
a hermitage. D'you think that adventure is found only in the tropics
or among gentry in red shirts? Maybe you're rubbing shoulders
with it at this moment.'
'That's what Kipling says,' he said, his eyes brightening, and he
quoted some verse about 'Romance bringing up the 9.15'.
'Here's a true tale for you then,' I cried, 'and a month from now
you can make a novel out of it.'
Sitting on the bridge in the soft May gloaming I pitched him a
lovely yarn.
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