“Well,” said he, “one evening a lot of us were together, and we got talking about the way in which artists did all kinds of things in olden times, designed every kind of decoration and most kinds of furniture, and some one suggested—as a joke more than anything else—that we should each put down five pounds and form a company. Fivers were blossoms of a rare growth among us in those days, and I won’t swear that the table bristled with fivers. Anyhow, the firm was formed, but of course there was no deed, or anything of that kind. In fact, it was a mere playing at business, and Morris was elected manager, not because we ever dreamed he would turn out a man of business, but because he was the only one among us who had both time and money to spare. We had no idea whatever of commercial success, but it succeeded almost in our own despite. Here comes the manager. You must mind your _p’s_ and _q’s_ with him; he is a wonderfully stand-off chap, and generally manages to take against people.” “What is he like?” I said. “You know the portraits of Francis I. Well, take that portrait as the basis of what you would call in your metaphysical jargon your ‘mental image’ of the manager’s face, soften down the nose a bit, and give him the rose-bloom colour of an English farmer, and there you have him.” “What about Francis’s eyes?” I said. “Well, they are not quite so small, but not big—blue-grey, but full of genius.” And then I saw, coming towards us on a rough pony so diminutive that he well deserved the name of “Mouse,” the figure of a man in a wideawake—a figure so broad and square that the breeze at his back, soft and balmy as it was, seemed to be using him as a sail, and blowing both him and the pony towards us. When Rossetti introduced me, the manager greeted him with a “H’m! I thought you were alone.” This did not seem promising. Morris at that time was as proverbial for his exclusiveness as he afterwards became for his expansiveness.