“Quite right,” said Father Payne.  “You keep them for an acceptable time.  Never tell strings of stories—­and, by the way, my young friends, that’s the art of writing.  Don’t cram in good things—­space them out, Barthrop!”

“I think I can spread the butter as thin as anyone,” said Barthrop, smiling.

“So you can, so you can!” said Father Payne enthusiastically, “and very thin slices too!  I give you full credit for that!”

The men had begun to drift away, and I was presently left alone with Father Payne.  “Now you come along of me!” he said to me; and when I got up, he took my arm in a pleasant fashion, led me to a big curtained archway at the far end of the hall, under the gallery, and along a flagged passage to the right.  As we went he pointed to the doors—­“Smoking-room—­Library”—­and at the end of the passage he opened a door, and led me into a small panelled room with a big window, closely curtained.  It was a solid and stately place, wholly bare of ornament.  It had a writing-table, a bookcase, two armchairs of leather, a fine fireplace with marble pillars, and an old painting let into the panelling above it.  There was a bright, unshaded lamp on the table.  “This is my room,” he said, “and there’s nothing in it that I don’t use, except those pillars; and when I haul on them, like Samson, the house comes down.  Now you sit down there, and we’ll have a talk.  Do you mind the light?  No?  Well, that’s all right, as I want to have a good look at you, you know!  You can get a smoke afterwards—­this is business!”

He sate down in the chair opposite me, and stirred the fire.  He had fine, large, solid hands, the softness of which, like silk, had struck me when I shook hands with him; and, though he was both elderly and bulky, he moved with a certain grace and alertness.  “Tell me your tale from the beginning,” he said, “Don’t leave out any details—­I like details.  Let’s have your life and death and Christian sufferings, as the tracts say.”

He heard me with much patience, sometimes smiling, sometimes nodding, when I had finished, he said:  “Now I must ask you a few questions—­you don’t mind if they are plain questions—­rather unpleasant questions?” He bent his brows upon me and smiled.  “No,” I said, “not at all.”  “Well, then,” he said, “where’s the vocation in all this?  This place, to be brief, is for men who have a real vocation for writing, and yet never would otherwise have the time or the leisure to train for it.  You see, in England, people think that you needn’t train for writing—­that you have just got to begin, and there you are.  Very few people have the money to wait a few years—­they have to write, not what they want to write, but what other people want to read.  And so it comes about that by the time that they have earned the money and the leisure, the spring is gone, the freshness is gone, there’s no invention and no zest.  Writing can’t be done in a little corner of life.