Page:Ethel Churchill 2.pdf/14

12 mouth. He might have sat for a personification of fear: if he moved, he seemed rather afraid of his own shadow following him too closely; if he laughed, he soon checked himself, quite alarmed at the sound. He began a conversation at your elbow; but, before it was finished, he had gradually backed his chair to the other end of the room. He always contrived to sit next the door, to which he paid more attention than to his hearer; his eye always wandering to it as if he meditated an escape, and yet this man was the most audacious libeller of his time. Reputation, feelings, or even chastisement, were as nothing in the balance weighed against his interest; life was to him only a long sum; his ledger was his Bible, and his religion, profit. For a little while he went on writing: this he did on principle. "Authors," he was wont to say, "come in a direct line from Reuben; they are unstable as water, and never know exactly what it is they really do want. I always give them a little waiting, just to shew I don't care much