In writing a story a safe plan must be to imitate your favourite author.
Until he was nine, when he abandoned the calling, Neil was my favourite
author, and I therefore decide to follow his method of dividing the
story into short chapters so as to make it look longer.
When he was nine I took him to his preparatory, he prancing in the
glories of the unknown until the hour came for me to go, “the hour
between the dog and the wolf,” and then he was afraid. I said that in
the holidays all would be just as it had been before, but the newly-wise
one shook his head; and on my return home, when I wandered out unmanned
to look at his tool-shed, I found these smashing words in his writing
pinned to the door: