He actually blushed. “I want to write books,” he said.

 

“And what better chance could you ask?” I cried. “Man, I’ve often thought that

an innkeeper would make the best story-teller in the world.”

 

“Not now,” he said eagerly. “Maybe in the old days when you had pilgrims and

ballad-makers and highwaymen and mail-coaches on the road.

 

But not now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of fat women, who stop for

lunch, and a fisherman or two in the spring, and the shooting tenants in August.

There is not much material to be got out of that. I want to see life, to travel

the world, and write things like Kipling and Conrad. But the most I’ve done yet

is to get some verses printed in _Chambers’s Journal_.”

 

I looked at the inn standing golden in the sunset against the brown hills.

 

“I’ve knocked a bit about the world, and I wouldn’t despise such a hermitage.

D’you think that adventure is found only in the tropics or among gentry in red

shirts? Maybe you’re rubbing shoulders with it at this moment.”

 

“That’s what Kipling says,” he said, his eyes brightening, and he quoted some

verse about “Romance brings up the 9.15.”

 

“Here’s a true tale for you then,” I cried, “and a month from now you can make a

novel out of it.”