Later that evening, Edwin sat at a small deal table in the embrasure of the dormer window of the empty attic¹ next to his bedroom. During the interval² between tea and the rendezvous³ with Big James he had formally planted his flag in that room. He had swept it out with a long-brush, while Clara stood at the door giggling⁴ at the spectacle and telling him that he had no right thus to annex⁵ territory in the absence of the overlord. He had mounted a pair of steps, and put a lot of lumber⁶ through a trap at the head of the stairs into the loft⁷. And he had got a table, a lamp, and a chair. That was all that he needed for the moment. He had gone out to meet Big James with his head quite half-full of this vague attic-project, but the night sights of Bursley, and especially the music at the Dragon, and still more especially the dancing at the Dragon, had almost expelled the attic-project from his head. When he returned unobtrusively into the house and learnt from a disturbed Mrs Nixon, who was sewing in the kitchen, that he was understood to be in his new attic, and that his sisters had gone to bed, the enchantment⁸ of the attic had instantly resumed much of its power over him, and he had hurried upstairs fortified⁹ with a slice of bread and half a cold sausage. He had eaten the food absently in gulps¹⁰ while staring at the cover of “Cazenove’s Architectural Views of European Capitals,” abstracted from the shop without payment. Then he had pinned part of a sheet of cartridge-paper on an old drawing-board which he

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