"Not at all," I said; "I make it stricter than ever. If you hadn't used my table I should have looked in my coat pocket and found the letter long ago."
"Anyhow," she said, "it's a comfort to think you won't have to write to the Sultan of Morocco."
There harbours somewhere in our midst to-day A visionary whom I long to meet; He shuns publicity, and yet his sway Is felt in many a teeming London street, From staid Stoke Newington to sylvan Sheen, From gay Mile End to high-browed Golder's Green.
'Tis he who planned the routes for motor-bi, Who set them in the way that they should go, That Maida Vale might wot of Peckham Rye, That Walham Green might fraternise with Bow, For him a Norwood bus stormed Notting Hill, 'Erb at the helm, Augustus at the till.
"Tooting is fair," he mused, "but what of Kew? Shall Cricklewood and Balham be forgot?" Mindful of regions Barking never knew, He linked them up with that idyllic spot;, And then, his wild imaginings to crown, He ran a bus from Barnes to Camden Town.
Dreamer of dreams! above the city's strife I picture him, in some lone eyrie pent, What time the crash and roar of London's life Drone deep-mouthed up in sullen music blent, And, hearkening, he weaves with lonely glee A wondrous web of bus-routes yet to be.
[Illustration: _Farmer's Wife (to visitor)._ "Now, Johnny, will you go and collect the eggs, and don't take the china ones. I suppose you know what they're for?"
_Johnny._ "Oh, yes; they're for a pattern to show 'em how to make the others."]
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._}
Mr. Beresford is most warmly to be congratulated upon his new book, _The House in Demetrius Road_ (Heinemann). Mr. Beresford's work has had from the first remarkable qualities that place him beyond question amongst the first half-dozen of the younger English novelists; but never before, I think, have his talents had a subject so exactly suited to their best display. It would be difficult to praise too highly the grim and relentless effect of the author's treatment of his subject. _Robin Gregg_ is a drunkard, and everyone about him--his secretary, his sister-in-law, his little girl--is caught into the dingy cloud of his vice. The house also is caught; and very fine indeed is the way in which Mr. Beresford has presented his atmosphere--the rooms, the dirty strip of garden, the shabby suburb, the London rain--but beyond all these things is the central figure of _Gregg_ himself. Here is a character entirely new to English fiction--a man who in spite of his degradation has his brilliance, his humour and, above all, his mystery. It is in this implication that, at the very heart of the man, there are fine things too degraded and degraded things too fine for any human record of them to be possible that the exceptional merit of Mr. Beresford's work lies. In his desire to avoid any possible cheapness or weak indulgence he misses, perhaps, some effects of colour and pathos that might, a little, have heightened the contrasts of his study; and I do not feel that the woman is as vivid as she should be. These things, however, affect very slightly a story that its author may indeed be proud to have written.