He wants you to run down and see him."
* * * * *
Merton had come to New York the year before, to work on the _Express_.
Mackworth had gotten him the job. Ally was as meticulously dressed as
ever. His eyes swept me from head to foot, with an instinctive glance of
appraisal, as he shook hands.
"Come on up on the roof. The paper wants a photo of you ... to go with a
story I'm writing about you."
* * * * *
I rather resented all my friends' way of talking to me, as if I were a
child to be discussed, ordered about, and disposed of. But I humoured
them by playing up to their patronising spirit ... even playing horse
with them continually on the sly, and having lots of fun that they
didn't suspect.
* * * * *
The next morning I was in the office of the _Independent_, visiting with
the literary editor, good old Dr. William Hayes Ward. He was a man of
eighty years ... a scholar in English and the Greek and Latin
classics....
Once, when on a vacation he had written me that, as pastime, he had
read the whole of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ over again. In the Greek, of
course.
His abused eyes floated uneasily behind a double pair of lenses ... a
dissenting minister ... of the old school ... he seemed to me far more
youthful, more invigorating, than any of my other more youthful friends
in the literary and magazine world.
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