“Nor picturesque,” said Hatton; “and that is why they’ve been so neglected. There is romance in an out-and-out hooligan. It interests people to reform him. But to the outsider my boys are dull. I don’t find them so. But then I know them. Boxing lessons are just what they want. In fact, I was telling Sidney Price, an insurance clerk who lives in Lambeth and helps me at the club, only yesterday how much I wished we could teach them to use the gloves.” “I’ll take it on, then, Hatton, if you like,” I said. “It ought to keep me in form.” I found that it did. I ceased to be aware of my liver. That winter I was able to work to good purpose, and the result was that I arrived. It dawned upon me at last that the “precarious” idea was played out. One could see too plainly the white sheet and phosphorus. And I was happy. Happier, perhaps, than I had ever hoped to be. Happier, in a sense, than I can hope to be again. I had congenial work, and, what is more, I had congenial friends. What friends they were! Julian—I seem to see him now sprawling in his hammock, sucking his pipe, planning an advertisement, or propounding some whimsical theory of life; and in his eyes he bears the pain of one whose love and life are spoilt. Julian—no longer my friend. Kit and Malim—what evenings are suggested by those names. Evenings alone with Malim at his flat in Vernon Place. An unimpeachable dinner, a hand at picquet, midnight talk with the blue smoke wreathing round our heads. Well, Malim and I are unlikely to meet again in Vernon Place. Nor shall we foregather at the little house in the Hampstead Road, the house which Kit enveloped in an inimitable air of domesticity. Her past had not been unconnected with the minor stage. She could play on the piano from ear, and sing the songs of the street with a charming cockney twang. But there was nothing of the stage about her now. She was born for domesticity and, as the wife of Malim, she wished to forget all that had gone before. She even hesitated to give us her wonderful imitations of the customers at the fried fish shop, because in her heart she did not think such impersonations altogether suitable for a respectable married woman. It was Malim who got me elected to the Barrel Club. I take it that I shall pay few more visits there. I have mentioned at this point the love of my old friends who made my first years in London a period of happiness, since it was in this month of April that I had a momentous conversation with Julian about Margaret. He had come to Walpole Street to use my typewriter, and seemed amazed to find that I was still living in much the same style as I had always done. “Let me see,” he said. “How long is it since I was here last?” “You came some time before Christmas.” “Ah, yes,” he said reminiscently. “I was doing a lot of travelling just then.” And he added, thoughtfully, “What a curious fellow you are, Jimmy. Here are you making——” He glanced at me. “Oh, say a thousand a year.”