might cost but a few shillings apiece. Jimmy's total capital
amounted to a bare fifteen pounds, and his means of subsistence so far
appeared to consist of the introduction to Dodgson of the _Record_. Not
that the fact troubled him greatly. A more sanguine man would have been
haunted by the fear of his money giving out before any earnest of future
success came to him; a less experienced man would never have dreamed of
making the attempt at all; but Jimmy was used to being hard pressed for
cash, and had learnt in a rough school not to expect very much. He was
used to drifting, and, in any case, he had practically nothing to lose.

On the first morning Jimmy went out to have a look at the neighbourhood,
but after an hour's walk he had seen enough to kill any desire he might
have felt for further exploration. The whole district was prosaic and
unlovely, saturated with the spirit of municipal government. There were
rows and rows of jerry-built houses running at right angles to the High
Street, houses with small rooms and big rates, occupied by tired-looking
men who hurried to the station about half-past eight every morning, and
did not get back again till after seven in the evening, when you would
meet them walking homewards rather slowly, shuffling a little perhaps,
as overworked clerks are prone to do, and still carrying the halfpenny
paper which they had bought on their way to town. They had read every
word in it, and their wives would be too busy, or too worn-out, to give
it a glance; but still it had a value as fire-lighting material.
Halfpennies were not negligible factors in those desirable villa
residences. You could see that when the women folk went out to do their
morning shopping. Some of them were flashily-smart, some, most perhaps,
drab and weary like their husbands; but all had to pay cash to those
prosperous tradesmen in the High Street, every one of whom looked like
a councillor, or, at the very least, a guardian, having the air of
growing rich at the expense of the multitude.

There seemed to be a council school, aggressive in its hideousness, up
every second side street; the grinding whirr of the municipal trams was
always in your ears, to remind you of the poverty of the neighbourhood
in case our eyes should play you false, that worst form of poverty which
has to wear a decent black suit and possesses the mockery of a vote;
whilst the only alternative to the pavements--laid by a
councillor-contractor, and