Vague and confused were the thoughts of Henry as the 'bus lumbered its way by historic Drury Lane and across Holborn, to his door in Bloomsbury. A 'bus ride was still full of romance to him, and the glimmering lamps of London were dearer to his mind than "the swing of Pleiades"; every jingling cab that passed, every lighted window, was touched with romance in his eyes. To make this wondrous City listen to him--how the dream thrilled him! That the unknown thousands who flitted through these world-famous streets, and lived behind these lighted windows, might read what he wrote and know him for the writer--it was worth trying for. Already he had seen his book brave in bright gilt, shouldering the best of them in the book-shops of Holborn and the Strand; he could read the reviews distinctly: noticed even the size and style of the type they were set in, was gratified to find them so remarkably favourable, and--"Wob'n Plice!" shouted the conductor. Henry descended to asphalt, and was presently putting on his slippers in his small sitting-room in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. CHAPTER XX THREE LETTERS, AND SOME OTHERS ON the mantelpiece of his room, set on end against the little marble clock which ignored the flight of time, Henry found three letters. He examined the addresses and postmarks of each, and saw at a glance that one was from his sister Dora, another from Flo, and the third from Edgar Winton. For a moment he hesitated, undecided which to open first. Home for him had a far-off call by now, and it was with the vague sense of a dream that was past that he read Dora's fortnightly letters. Flo--hers was a more recent influence--and from a fascinating it had come to be an irksome one: the more real by that token. He burst open Edgar's letter with his forefinger, and read: "DEAR HENRY,--I've been going to write you any time these last six weeks, but--well, old man, I'm no hand at correspondence unless it's a penny a line. Besides, I hear about you through Flo, who is quite reconciled to your absence, which the poet tells us makes the heart grow fonder. I wonder! "But first of all, you'll want an inside view of the dear old rickety old _Leader_. Your successor is a daisy, and no mistake. Walks into the office in knickers and a cloth cap, and shaves once a week when his beard is ready for clipping. Even Dodge, the newest junior, sneers at him, and refuses to recognise 'that josser' as editor. It's hard cheese on a youngster to run up against a weed like Steel for his first editor. Gives a low idea of our noble profession, don't you know.