"What are you waiting for, John?" his Uncle Matthew asked.
He sat still, scarcely moving even for ease in his chair, staring at the white paper until it began to dance in front of his eyes, but he did not begin to write on it.
"Are you still waiting for inspiration, John?" his Uncle asked.
"You don't seem to be getting any," Mrs. MacDermott said.
He got up and put the writing materials away. "I'll wait 'til the morning," he replied.
John wrote his first story during the following week, and when he had completed it, he made a copy of it on large sheets of foolscap in a shapely hand, and sewed the pages together with green thread. Uncle Matthew had purchased brass fasteners to bind the pages together, but Uncle William said that a man might easily tear his fingers with "them things" and contract blood-poisoning.
"And that would give him a scunner against your story, mebbe!" he added.
John accepted Uncle William's advice, not so much in the interests of humanity, as because he liked the look of the green thread. He had read the story to his uncles, after the shop was closed. They had drawn their chairs up to the fire, in which sods of turf and coal were burning, and the agreeable odour of the turf soothed their senses while they listened to John's sharp voice. Mrs. MacDermott would not join the circle before the fire. She declared that she had too much work to do to waste her time on trash, and she wondered that her brothers-in-law could find nothing better to do than to encourage a headstrong lad in a foolish business. She went about her work with much bustle and clatter, which, however, diminished considerably as John began to read the story, and ended altogether soon afterwards.
"D'you like it, Uncle William?" John said, when he had read the story to them.
"I'm glad," John answered. "And you, do you like it, Uncle Matthew?"
"I like it queer and well," Uncle Matthew murmured, "only!..." He hesitated as if he were reluctant to make any adverse comment on the story.
"Only what?" John demanded with some impatience. He had asked for the opinions of his uncles, indeed, but it had not occurred to him that they would not think as highly of the story as he thought of it himself.
"Well ... there's no love in it!" Uncle Matthew went on.