u'll soon make a mess of
it. Why, but for the steam, I should not have sold 10s. worth of whelks
all the night through."

This, and many another yarn of kindred substance which he heard from
other people determined Ernest more than ever to stake on tailoring as
the one trade about which he knew anything at all, nevertheless, here
were three or four days gone by and employment seemed as far off as ever.

I now did what I ought to have done before, that is to say, I called on
my own tailor whom I had dealt with for over a quarter of a century and
asked his advice. He declared Ernest's plan to be hopeless. "If," said
Mr Larkins, for this was my tailor's name, "he had begun at fourteen, it
might have done, but no man of twenty-four could stand being turned to
work into a workshop full of tailors; he would not get on with the men,
nor the men with him; you could not expect him to be 'hail fellow, well
met' with them, and you could not expect his fellow-workmen to like him
if he was not. A man must have sunk low through drink or natural taste
for low company, before he could get on with those who have had such a
different training from his own."

Mr Larkins said a great deal more and wound up by taking me to see the
place where his own men worked. "This is a paradise," he said, "compared
to most workshops. What gentleman could stand this air, think you, for a
fortnight?"

I was glad enough to get out of the hot, fetid atmosphere in five
minutes, and saw that there was no brick of Ernest's prison to be
loosened by going and working among tailors in a workshop.

Mr Larkins wound up by saying that even if my _protege_ were a much
better workman than he probably was, no master would give him employment,
for fear of creating a bother among the men.

I left, feeling that I ought to have thought of all this myself, and was
more than ever perplexed as to whether I had not better let my young
friend have a few thousand pounds and send him out to the colonies, when,
on my return home at about five o'clock, I found him waiting for me,
radiant, and declaring that he had found all he wanted.

CHAPTER LXXI

It seems he had been patrolling the streets for the last three or four
nights--I suppose in search of something to do--at any rate knowing
better what he wanted to get than how to get it. Nevertheless, what he
wanted was in reality so easily to be found that it took a highly
educated scholar like himself to be un