ave been gentlemanly to answer an
advertisement!

"My mother thought at once of one of my uncles, who had retired from the
sea and was now a marine superintendent in Fenchurch Street. I called to
see him; but he was abroad attending to a damaged ship. I think it was a
month before I happened to meet the Winchester boy who had been in the
works with me. Quite by accident it was. Let me see now----"

Mr. Carville paused again, and leaning over to one of the geranium tubs
knocked his pipe out. Suddenly he laughed.

"Why," he said, "I'm telling you the whole story."

"That's what we want you to do," I said, and the others nodded.

"The trouble is, you know," went on Mr. Carville, "one thing leads to
another. You can't understand what I am without knowing how my brother
and I came to be so--antagonistic. And to explain that it's necessary to
show you how I grew up in this professional, easy-going, snobby
atmosphere and took it all in, while he, my brother, cut out his own
course and went his own way in defiance of everything. I remember now! I
saw that Winchester chap--his father was a wine-merchant and Master of
the Tinkers' Company--at Lord's. I had nothing to do, and instead of
hunting round to get a job, I went to Lord's to see the cricket. There
was old Belvoir clumping away at the nets. Engineering! Pooh! He had
eight hundred a year his aunt left him--catch him practising as an
engineer. He was going on a tour of all the Mediterranean
watering-places with an M.C.C. team. Well, we had lunch in the pavilion,
and I mentioned in a jolly sort of way that I'd been jounced out of the
office. He said it was 'a bally shame,' Oh, I did envy that chap his
eight hundred a year! Life seemed to him one grand, sweet song.
Cricket, Riviera, dances, clubs, country houses, everything. He was
fenced in on every side, safe from the vulgarity of the world. He was
hall-marked--a public-school man. He was a citizen of his world, I was
an alien. He was rich. I had not even a savings-bank book.

"I was going away after the match when I discovered he had been thinking
about me. That was Belvoir all over. He was a gentleman, and a gentleman
to my mind is like an artist in one thing only, he is born--and then
made. That was Belvoir. He had privileges as an English gentleman, but
he had also duties. We had been together in the shop as pupils; that
gave me a claim on him. He said he had an uncle in Yorkshire who was
chairman of an engineering