one commission already.
As for a City office, I couldn't stand it for a day."

Mrs. Marlow put another stitch in her fancy work, then pulled her thread
a little viciously, breaking it. "Well, I hope you will be careful, and
not write anything we need feel ashamed of. Remember, that though you
may have no position to lose, we have one."

"You needn't be afraid of that, May." There was a suspicion of scorn,
and more than a suspicion of anger, in his voice. "It doesn't make much
difference if I don't write under my own name, so long as I can get the
dollars, which are what I'm out for."

Mrs. Marlow gave in with a sigh. After all, so long as he kept the
family name out of print, there would not be much harm done; and it was
a relief to find that he looked at matters from a practical point of
view. Of course, he ought to have accepted Henry's assistance and gone
into the City; but if he would not do so, as seemed to be the case, it
was some consolation to find that he was apparently anxious to make
money in other ways.

But when she talked the matter over with her husband after Jimmy had
gone up to bed, Henry Marlow shook his head. His opinions coincided
exactly with those of Walter Grierson. "A most precarious occupation,"
he said, "and one which I should certainly not allow our boys to take
up. It's a great pity, as I believe I could have got him into Foulger's
office--Foulger and Hilmon, you know, the jobbers."

Upstairs, Jimmy was smoking and staring into his fire. Somehow, he felt
very disappointed, as though he had been working on a false assumption,
and must readjust his ideas and then start afresh. He was little more at
home than he had been the previous night in the hotel.

CHAPTER V

The hours of Jimmy's stay with the Marlows dragged by slowly. The
children, four boys, proved uninteresting in the extreme, whilst between
himself and Laura Marlow, May's sister-in-law, there was little in
common. Two other guests, an elderly aunt and uncle of Henry's, arrived
in time for dinner on the second night, and Jimmy retired more and more
into the background, or, rather, he found himself in the background by a
kind of natural sequence. No one wanted to put him there; in fact, both
his brother-in-law and his sister were kindness itself; but he was the
outsider in the party, sharing none of the interests of the others.

He had been invited for a week, at least, longer if possible; yet at the
end of three days h