Dirty face, wet boots, disturbing voice, everlasting questions, and possessive boastings--how can I complete the various volumes of _The Flax of Dream_, with Ernie always pestering. I have told him again and again that I wish he would go away to another cottage. But if he were to, I should be miserable, and miss my long motor-rides with Ernie among the cabbages, while the driver wears an enormous pair of his father’s boots. I should miss, too, the accounts of how Ernie has killed rats and rabbits with a stone and how he cut off the policeman’s head with a knife because the policeman used a swear word to Ernie. A SEED IN WASTE PLACES (_To M. G. S._) To and fro over the heated surface of Fleet Street passed the red omnibuses, a sickly pale vapour coming from the engines. It was a Saturday afternoon in August, and there were few people about. For myself, I had to toil at my useless and fretting work of getting material for one of the big Sunday newspapers. Saturday was the day when the paper became alive, and the Editor more exacting and more like an Egyptian slave-driver than ever. This was from the point of view of the wretched hack-writers who were privileged to work from ten o’clock in the morning till midnight the same day. Possibly the Editor did not regard himself as one so omnipotent, since he was the target for the deadly arrows of the proprietor’s wrath on Tuesday morning, should any blemish in the make-up of the paper be discovered, or any important item of news be missed. Nevertheless, we loathed the Editor on Saturdays, especially at evening. His face grew whiter, and his despairful leer at our non-success in obtaining some facts from a West End flunkey whose mistress had that morning lost a pearl necklace, or a reputation, was most exasperating for men with tired feet and grit-filled eyes. That afternoon of August London was more arid than ever. I looked with despair for any sign of beauty, something that could take my mind away from dinginess. My mind was drouthy, and the roots of calm thought were sapped. The blue sky overhead made me miserable: I thought of the waves lapping the sunlit sands of the West Country that I knew so well. There the gray stock-doves flew from the bushes growing on the headland cliff sides, and the lark’s song was ever in the air. Here by the church of Mary-le-Strand all nature was dead. True, there were pigeons, but their wings were tinged with soot, and they were alienated from the wild dove whose nest was among the blackthorns. Even the bark of the plane trees was unrefreshed, and guarded by iron cages; my thought was shut in too. My mind was never in my drudge work, however much I tried to force myself to think in terms of sensation and factory-made phrases. Everything was ugly, the competition, the smoke, the grimy buildings.