y and shabby, so long as one isn't
too shabby, as well as elsewhere. You'll not persuade me that it's not
an easier thing to keep afloat yonder than here. I wish _I_ were in
Yankeeland, that's all!" he added with feeble force. Then brooding for
a moment on his wrongs: "Have you a bloated brother? or you, sir? It
matters little to you. But it has mattered to me with a vengeance!
Shabby as I sit here I can boast that advantage--as he his five thousand
a year. Being but a twelvemonth my elder he swaggers while I go thus.
There's old England for you! A very pretty place for HIM!"

"Poor old England!" said Searle softly.

"Has your brother never helped you?" I asked.

"A five-pound note now and then! Oh I don't say there haven't been times
when I haven't inspired an irresistible sympathy. I've not been what I
should. I married dreadfully out of the way. But the devil of it is that
he started fair and I started foul; with the tastes, the desires, the
needs, the sensibilities of a gentleman--and not another blessed 'tip.'
I can't afford to live in England."

"THIS poor gentleman fancied a couple of months ago that he couldn't
afford to live in America," I fondly explained.

"I'd 'swap'--do you call it?--chances with him!" And Mr. Rawson looked
quaintly rueful over his freedom of speech.

Searle sat supported there with his eyes closed and his face twitching
for violent emotion, and then of a sudden had a glare of gravity. "My
friend, you're a dead failure! Be judged! Don't talk about 'swapping.'
Don't talk about chances. Don't talk about fair starts and false starts.
I'm at that point myself that I've a right to speak. It lies neither
in one's chance nor one's start to make one a success; nor in anything
one's brother--however bloated--can do or can undo. It lies in one's
character. You and I, sir, have HAD no character--that's very plain.
We've been weak, sir; as weak as water. Here we are for it--sitting
staring in each other's faces and reading our weakness in each other's
eyes. We're of no importance whatever, Mr. Rawson!"

Mr. Rawson received this sally with a countenance in which abject
submission to the particular affirmed truth struggled with the
comparative propriety of his general rebellion against fate. In the
course of a minute a due self-respect yielded to the warm comfortable
sense of his being relieved of the cares of an attitude. "Go on, sir, go
on," he said. "It's wholesome doctrine." And he wiped his e