g. Well, there he was, a great big chap with a hooked
nose and flashing black eyes behind the goggles. Where had he been?
Neither to Canada nor to New Zealand. He'd been to France. He'd gone
there and learned the motor-car business in one of the first shops ever
built. Picked it up you may say, as he picked everything up, but he got
it none the less. He'd seen the possibilities of the thing, and here he
was appointed London agent for the French firm at three hundred a year.
He, laughed when he saw me. 'Hullo, Charley!, he sneers. 'How's the
puff-puffs?' He sneered at everything about me. I had learned to read
French pretty well and knew my classics in the original, but here was my
young brother sneering at me in French _argot_ which he knew I couldn't
resent because I couldn't understand it.

"He would come down to the tennis club that evening, though I didn't
want him. Somehow I dreaded introducing him to Gladys. There was no need
for me to worry. He introduced himself. In another five minutes he was
talking French with her, and she was screaming with laughter at the
stories he told her. He saw her home....

"You can understand that the next day I was in a bad condition for work.
And it so happened that I had a job that needed all the concentration I
could give it. I don't remember a single detail of it. I had been
neglecting my work then, like all young chaps in love, but on this
occasion I made a costly mistake. I marked the driving pulley on a
line-shaft a foot too small. The aggravating part was I sent it to the
head office in Yorkshire without revising it and _they_ got on to my
boss. He took the bit in his teeth and went for me. He gave me a week to
find another job. I was 'down and out.'

"I was paralyzed for a while. I didn't know where to turn. The bottom
had dropped out of my world for good and all. Another job! Why, I knew
men in that employ who had held their jobs for forty years.

"I said nothing about it at home. My brother, with his three hundred a
year and his French _argot_, made home unbearable and I thought of
clearing out of it. But where could I go? You see, if you work for some
specialist for a number of years, the only job you can move to is a
position with another specialist of the same line. And this business I
was in was run by about six big firms.

"Still, the thought of clearing out held me. I saw that if my brother
was going to live at home, I'd have to go. And Saturday came round and