'Oh, I'll be very glad,' I said. 'By the way, you did mention at first three or four, not two or three hundred.' 'Did I? Ah! Well, say three to begin with.' I gathered it was rather difficult for the real Olympian to think at all in figures so absurdly low. So we let it go at that, and, this being a Friday, I agreed to start work at the office on the following Monday. 'I shall be able to get a room here, shall I not?' I asked with some anxiety. 'A room? Oh, surely, surely. Yes, yes, that's all right. Ask for me. Come and see me before doing anything, and I'll see to it. So glad we've fixed it. Good-bye!' And so, very affably, I was bowed out of my free-lance life, the which I had entered by way of the north-eastern slums. XII My first Monday in the _Advocate_ office was not a pleasant day. Arriving there about ten o'clock in the morning, I learned that the editor was never expected before three in the afternoon. I knew no other person in the building, and so no place was open to me except the waiting-room. However, I whiled away the morning in that apartment by making a pretty thorough study of a file of the _Advocate_, in the course of which I took notes and made memoranda of suggestions which would have kept an editor busy for a week or two had he acted upon one half of them. The time thus spent was far from wasted, since it gave me more of an insight into current politics (as reflected in the pages of this particular organ) than I had obtained during my whole life in England up till then, and it gave me a thorough grasp of the policy of the _Advocate_. After a somewhat Barmecidal feast in a Fleet Street eating-house (domestic expenditure left me very short of funds at this time), I returned to my post and wrote a political leading article which I ventured to think at least the equal in persuasive force and profundity of anything I had read that morning. At three o'clock precisely, my name, written on a slip of paper, was placed on the editorial table. There were then nine other people in the waiting-room. At four I began a second leading article, which was finished at half-past five. At a quarter to six the manuscript of both effusions was sent in to the editor. At a quarter to seven inquiry elicited the information that the editor had left the building almost an hour since, with Sir William Bartram, after a crowded afternoon which had brought disappointment to many beside myself who had wished to see him.