He declined to do even that. While all the world waited, this was
Pym's ultimatum:
"I shall begin the damned thing at eight o'clock."
Outside, the fog kept changing at intervals from black to white, as
lazily from white to black (the monster blinking); there was not a
sound from the street save of pedestrians tapping with their sticks on
the pavement as they moved forward warily, afraid of an embrace with
the unknown; it might have been a city of blind beggars, one of them a
boy.
At eight o'clock Pym rose with a groan and sat down in his
stocking-soles to write his delicious tale. He was now alone. But
though his legs were wound round his waste-paper basket, and he dipped
often and loudly in the saucer, like one ringing at the door of Fancy,
he could not get the idea that would set him going. He was still
dipping for inspiration when T. Sandys, who had been told to find the
second floor for himself, knocked at the door, and entered, quaking.
"I remember it vividly," Pym used to say when questioned in the after
years about this his first sight of Tommy, "and I hesitate to decide
which impressed me more, the richness of his voice, so remarkable in a
boy of sixteen, or his serene countenance, with its noble forehead,
behind which nothing base could lurk.
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