u for the next six months?"

"I'm sure I don't know what could have been done without it. I don't
think opportunities are as plentiful as we are told."

Henry had learned a little since that day he rode to Stratford with the
carrier.

"Didn't think much of the office, though. Did you, 'Enry?"

"No," he admitted somewhat unwillingly, "it wasn't so fine as I had
expected; but perhaps it is as good as they need."

"And nobody needs anythink better than that," which summed up in a
sentence Edward John's philosophy of life and the secret of his
financial soundness.

The few days remaining to Henry in Stratford went past all too slowly,
despite the jubilation of Mr. Trevor Smith at the success of his
promising _protege_, and Henry's application to the study of shorthand,
with which most of his time at the book-shop had been occupied of late.
Mr. Griggs and Pemble he left without a pang, the former still concerned
about his poultry, and the latter still cultivating his moustache; but
he was sorry to say good-bye to Mrs. Filbert and the irrepressible
Trevor, who would have made the success of his proposal an excuse to
borrow a fourth half-crown, were it not that the memory of the unpaid
three had better not be reawakened when Henry was going away.

His journey to Wheelton found him with hopes scarcely so high as those
he had cherished on his way to Stratford some three months before, but
he was at least fortified with some measure of that common sense which
only rises in the mind as the illusions of youth begin to sink.

It was not thought necessary for him to revisit Hampton Bagot before
removing to Wheelton--his face was still turned away from home. Thus far
he had been marking time merely; but now he was on the march in
earnest.

CHAPTER VII

AMONG NEW FRIENDS

SATURDAY, the 23rd of July, will always remain a red-letter day in the
history of Henry Charles. Even at this distance of time he could
doubtless recall every feature of the day as the train that carried him
steamed into the station. The languorous atmosphere of a hot summer
afternoon, the steady drizzle of warm rain, the flood of water around a
gutter-grating in Main Street, caused by a collection of straw and
rotten leaves--even that will always appear when a vision of the day
arises before his memory. The station platform had been freshly strewn
with sawdust on account of the weather, and