Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/118

106 The clear strong June sunshine streamed in through the window and turned the white of the poet's page to a dazzling silver splendour.

"Hang it all!" he cried, and he threw down the yellow-brown penholder. "It's too much! It's not to be borne! It's not human!"

He turned out his pockets. Two-and-sevenpence. He could draw the price of an ode and a from the Spectator—but not to-day, for this was a Bank Holiday, Whit Monday, in fact. Then he thought of his tobacco jar. Sure enough, there lurked some halfpence among the mossy shag, and—oh, wonder and joy and cursed carelessness for ever to be blessed—a gleaming coy half-sovereign. In the ticket-pocket of his overcoat a splendid unforeseen shilling—a florin and a sixpence in the velveteen jacket he had not worn since last year. Ten—and two—and one—and two and sevenpence and sixpence—sixteen shillings and a penny. Enough, more than enough, to take him out of this world of burst horsehair chairs and greedy foolscap, of arid authorship and burst bubbles of dreams to the real world, where spring, still