He went out himself, instead, animated by a freshening spirit of resentment at the futility of existence. From sheer force of habit, he dawdled in front of shop-windows, turned over hooks and prints in one after another of his accustomed resorts for second-hand merchandise, and otherwise killed time till the dinner hour. But he did it all without any inner pretence that the process afforded him consolation. Even when he met some fellows from the Temple, in Chancery Lane, and joined them in a series of visits to ancient bars in the vicinity, where they all stood at wearisome length, and argued with intolerable inconsequence about wholly irrelevant matters over their drinks, his thoughts maintained a moody concentration upon the theme of his personal unhappiness. The stray contributions which he offered to the general conversation were all of an acrid, not to say truculent, character. He had a sort of dour satisfaction in the utterance of offensive gibes and bitter jokes. Twice the threat of an altercation arose, in consequence of these ill-natured comments of his, and David sullenly welcomed the imminent quarrel; but the intervention of the others, without any help from him, cleared the atmosphere again. Even the peacemakers, however, evinced the opinion that he was behaving badly, and nodded cheerful adieus when at last he declared that they were a parcel of uninspired loons, with whom he marvelled to find himself consuming valuable time. They lifted their glasses at him mockingly as he strode away, with the gleam of an unexpressed “good riddance!” in their eyes. The consciousness that he had made himself disagreeable to these fellows had its uses as a counter-irritant to his inner self-disgust. It rendered solitude at least a trifle more supportable. He bought a novel, and read it beside his plate at Simpson’s, where the heavy joints and weighty old ale just fitted his mood. The book was one which the papers were talking of for the moment. David reflected grimly as he skimmed the opening chapters that Vestalia had asked him why he didn’t write a Scotch novel. They were all the vogue, she said, and while the fashion lasted, it was nonsense for any Scotchman to pretend that he could not profitably occupy his leisure time. He had replied, with some flippancy, that his imaginative powers might compass the construction of a tale, hut were unequal to the task of inventing also a whole dialect to tell it in. How, as the whim returned to him, his fancy parodied a title for this unborn work. How would “A Goddess, Some Merely Ordinary Fools and Lord Drumpipes” do? Ah! that Drumpipes! David paid his bill, lit a cigar, and sallied forth, suddenly informed with the notion of going to the Inn, and having it out with the Earl. He doubled up his fists as he hurried along.