How it opens
You were a young man with one book published and a bicycle, touring in the rain for material.
The inn at Windrush was the third inn of the day, and the rain had opinions about your luggage.
You will want the coffee room. The fire is laid, and the rain is set for the evening.
Are you the landlady?
I am helping. Mrs Bindle is short-handed, and I am, in every sense of the word, staying.
Choose
Write it all in the notebook, as ordered, and be ashamed of the notebook by midnight.
Play draughts with the bagman, and lose, and be liked, and learn the trade of England.
Sit in the taproom with a pipe and say nothing, and watch her draw the beer.