His flat was abandoned before quarter-day, his effects
transplanted at considerable cost, and ever since Langholm had been a
bigoted countryman, who could not spend a couple of days in town without
making himself offensive on the subject at his club, where he was
nevertheless discreetly vague as to the exact locality of his rural
paradise. Even at the club, however, it was admitted that his work had
improved almost as much as his appearance; and he put it all down to the
roses in which he lived embowered for so many months of the year. Such
was their profusion that you could have filled a clothes-basket without
missing one, and Langholm never visited rich or poor without a little
offering out of his abundance.
"They may be coals to Newcastle," he would say to the Woodgates or the
Steels, "but none of your Tyneside collieries are a patch on mine."
Like most victims of the artistic temperament, the literary Langholm was
a creature of moods; but the very fact of a voluntary visit from him was
sufficient guarantee of the humor in which he came, and this afternoon
he was at his best. He had indeed been writing all day, and for many
days past, and was filled with the curious exhilaration which
accompanies an output too rapid and too continuous to permit a running
sense of the defects.
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