_March_
When the poems were returned by three publishers within the first
fortnight of March, Guy was inclined to surrender his vocation and to
think about such regular work as would banish the reproach he began to
fancy was now perceptible at the back of everybody's eyes. The weather
was abominably cold, and even Plashers Mead itself was no longer the
embodiment of the old enthusiasm. Already in order to pay current
expenses he was drawing upon the next quarter, and the combination of
tradesmen's books with icy draughts curling through the house produced
an atmosphere of perpetual exasperation. It always seemed to be coldest
on Monday morning and Miss Peasey _would_ breathe over his shoulder
while he was adding up the bills.
"We apparently live on butter," he grumbled.
"Oh, no, it was really lamb you had yesterday," the housekeeper
maintained irrelevantly.
"I said we apparently live on butter," Guy shouted.
Then of course Miss Peasey _would_ poke her veiny nose right down into
the book, while the draught blew her hair about and unpleasantly tickled
his cheek.
"It's the best butter," she said sorrowfully at last.
"But my watch is quite all right."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I made an allusion to Alice in Wonderland," he shouted.
Miss Peasey retired from the room in dudgeon, and Guy wasted ten minutes
in examining various theories on what his housekeeper could have
thought he meant by his last remark. Finally he wrote off to a friend of
his, an ardent young Radical peer with whom he had shared rooms at
Oxford.