es.

Day followed day, and one day was like another. Saturday came, and Paul
received his wages. He paid his first weekly bill at his boarding-house
by aid of the remnant of the sovereign left for pocket-money. Next week
saw him in debt. The third week saw him dinnerless. He knew the mistake
his father had made, but it did not occur to him to take any active
steps to remedy it Any lad of his years with a farthing's-worth of
business faculty would have written home to explain his case, and would
have gone into cheaper lodgings. Paul chose to do nothing, but to wander
hungrily and vacantly through the city in the dinner-hour. He found
no more varnish for the work of art, and his working comrade was less
amiable than he had been. The week's end found him a little further
in debt, in spite of abstention. His landlady, who thought he had been
impertinent in that unconscious matter of the aspirate, was not disposed
to be friendly.

'I can tell by your looks,' she said, 'that you have been dissipating,
and I know that you are wasting your money. I shall write and tell your
father so.'

'Very well,' said Paul.

He was voracious at the supper-table, and that made the landlady no
kinder to him. He ate like a wolf at every meal on Sunday, and his
fellow-boarders chaffed him; but the lady of the house looked as if she
would fain have poisoned him.

She asked Paul into her private sitting-room after supper, and he
accepted her invitation.

'I shall expect a satisfactory settlement at the end of this week, Mr.
Armstrong,' she said icily. 'Unless I get it from you I shall write to
your home for it, and in any case I shall be obliged if you will leave.'

'Very well,' said Paul.

He thought all this rather unprosperous for a beginning of a free life,
but he cared astonishingly little. If he had looked at the prospect, he
might have begun to think it in a small way very serious. Recalling
the time as he sat in his mountain eyrie, he found in it the first
indication of his own irresponsibility, a knack of blinding himself to
consequences.

Monday came, and he dined. It did not seem worth while to deny himself
any further. Tuesday came, and in the middle of the morning's work a
man rapped on his case with a composing-stick, and said aloud, 'I call
a Chapel.' Mr. Warr turned on Paul, and told him he must go outside and
wait until such time as the meeting thus summoned was over. He and three
apprentices clustered on the landing.