"You know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them.
"Yes."
"I set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back when they were through."
"Did you get them?"
"Yep. It will give them more respect for what I'm trying to do," he said.
Not long after he illustrated one of Kipling's stories.
He was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. One could see by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted over it.
At this time Kipling came to his studio. It was by special arrangement, but S—— received him as if he were—well, as artists usually receive authors. They talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away.
"It's coming my way now," he said, when he could no longer conceal his feelings. "I want to do something good on this."
Through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close to his friends—a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting, boxing, fencing—and interested himself in the mechanics I have described. His drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies and recreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were, on to distinction. In the first six months of his studio life he had learned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask and assume the foils with one of his companions.