obliged to give Vancouver Island up as a bad job--I knew him at
once, when, with head a little on one side, and tea-cup held high, as if,
to confer a blessing, he said: "Hallo!" across the Club smoking-room.

Thin as a lath--not one ounce heavier--tall, and very upright, with his
pale forehead, and pale eyes, and pale beard, he had the air of a ghost
of a man. He had always had that air. And his voice--that
matter-of-fact and slightly nasal voice, with its thin, pragmatical
tone--was like a wraith of optimism, issuing between pale lips. I
noticed; too, that his town habiliments still had their unspeakable pale
neatness, as if, poor things, they were trying to stare the daylight out
of countenance.

He brought his tea across to my bay window, with that wistful sociability
of his, as of a man who cannot always find a listener.

"But what are you doing in town?" I said. "I thought you were in
Yorkshire with your aunt."

Over his round, light eyes, fixed on something in the street, the lids
fell quickly twice, as the film falls over the eyes of a parrot.

"I'm after a job," he answered. "Must be on the spot just now."

And it seemed to me that I had heard those words from him before.

"Ah, yes," I said, "and do you think you'll get it?"

But even as I spoke I felt sorry, remembering how many jobs he had been
after in his time, and how soon they ended when he had got them.

He answered:

"Oh, yes! They ought to give it me," then added rather suddenly: "You
never know, though. People are so funny!"

And crossing his thin legs, he went on to tell me, with quaint
impersonality, a number of instances of how people had been funny in
connection with jobs he had not been given.

"You see," he ended, "the country's in such a state--capital going out of
it every day. Enterprise being killed all over the place. There's
practically nothing to be had!"

"Ah!" I said, "you think it's worse, then, than it used to be?"

He smiled; in that smile there was a shade of patronage.

"We're going down-hill as fast as ever we can. National character's
losing all its backbone. No wonder, with all this molly-coddling going
on!"

"Oh!" I murmured, "molly-coddling? Isn't that excessive?"

"Well! Look at the way everything's being done for them! The working
classes are losing their self-respect as fast as ever they can. Their
independence is gone already!"

"You think?"

"Sure of it! I'll give you an instance----"