He apologised quietly, fetched the third volume, straightened the disordered leaves of the discarded second, and with the air of one well accustomed to such little domestic scenes, took up his hat and came out with me. “How long do you intend to go on playing David to the Major’s Saul?” I asked, marvelling at the way in which he endured the humours of his father. “As long as I have the chance,” he replied. “I say, are you sure you won’t mind staying with us? It can’t be a very comfortable household for an outsider.” “Much better than for an insider, to all appearance,” I replied. “I’m only too delighted to stay. And now, old fellow, tell me the honest truth--you didn’t, you know, in your letter--how have you been getting on?” Derrick launched into an account of his father’s ailments. “Oh, hang the Major! I don’t care about him, I want to know about you,” I cried. “About me?” said Derrick doubtfully. “Oh, I’m right enough.” “What do you do with yourself? How on earth do you kill time?” I asked. “Come, give me a full, true, and particular account of it all.” “We have tried three other servants,” said Derrick; “but the plan doesn’t answer. They either won’t stand it, or else they are bribed into smuggling brandy into the house. I find I can do most things for my father, and in the morning he has an attendant from the hospital who is trustworthy, and who does what is necessary for him. At ten we breakfast together, then there are the morning papers, which he likes to have read to him. After that I go round to the Pump Room with him--odd contrast now to what it must have been when Bath was the rage. Then we have lunch. In the afternoon, if he is well enough, we drive; if not he sleeps, and I get a walk. Later on an old Indian friend of his will sometimes drop in; if not he likes to be read to until dinner. After dinner we play chess--he is a first-rate player. At ten I help him to bed; from eleven to twelve I smoke and study Socialism and all the rest of it that Lynwood is at present floundering in.” “Why don’t you write, then?” “I tried it, but it didn’t answer. I couldn’t sleep after it, and was, in fact, too tired; seems absurd to be tired after such a day as that, but somehow it takes it out of one more than the hardest reading; I don’t know why.” “Why,” I said angrily, “it’s because it is work to which you are quite unsuited--work for a thick-skinned, hard-hearted, uncultivated and well-paid attendant, not for the novelist who is to be the chief light of our generation.” He laughed at this estimate of his powers. “Novelists, like other cattle, have to obey their owner,” he said lightly.