Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/110

 should have been starved long since if I hadn't. My business is bird-stuffing, as you may have heard or guessed, and where should I have been if I'd had to live upon all the orders for bird-stuffing I got from the labouring classes? They can't stuff themselves enough, let alone their birds! The swells want owls, and hawks, and pheasants, and what not stuffed with outspread wings for fire-screens, but the poor people want the fire itself, and want it so badly that they never hollow for screens, and wouldn't use 'em if they had 'em. No, no; hate the swells, my boy, but use 'em. What have you been?"

"An usher in a school!"

"Of course! I guessed it would be some of those delightful occupations for which the supply is unlimited and the demand nothing, but I scarcely thought it could be so bad as that! Usher in a school! hewer in a coal-pit, stone-breaker on a country road, horse in a mill, anything better than that!"

"What could I do?"

"What could you do? Sell your books, pawn your watch, take a steerage passage and go out to Australia. Black boots, tend sheep, be cad to an omnibus, or shopwalker to a store out there, every one of 'em better than dragging on in the conventional torture of this played-out staggering old country! That's a little gassy you'll think, and so it is, but I mean better than that. I've long-standing and intimate connexions with the Zoological Acclimatisation Society in Melbourne, and, if you can pay your passage out, I'll guarantee that in the introductions I give you, they'll find you something to do. If you can't find the money for your passage out, perhaps it can be found for you!"

Not since James Ashurst's death, not for some weeks before that event indeed, when the stricken man had taken leave of his old pupil and friend, had Walter Joyce heard the words of friendship and kindness from any man. Perhaps, a little unmanned by the disappointment and humiliation he had undergone since his arrival in London, he was a little unmanned at this speech from his newly found friend; at all events the tears stood in his eyes, and his voice was husky, as he replied:

"I ought to be very much obliged to you, and indeed, indeed I am! but I fear you'll think me an ungrateful cub when I tell you that I can't possibly go away from England. Possibly is a strong word, but I mean, that I can't think of it until I've exhausted every means, every chance of obtaining the barest livelihood here!"

The old man eyed him from under his bent brows earnestly for a moment, and then said abruptly. "Ties, eh? father?"

"No!" said Joyce, with a half blush—very young, you see, and country bred—"as both my mother and father are dead, but—but there is"

"Oh Lord!" grunted Mr. Byrne; "of course there is, there always is in such cases! Blind old bat I was not to see it at first! Ah, she was left lamenting, and all the rest of it, quite knocks the Australian idea on the head! Now, let me think what can be done for you here! There's Buncombe and Co., the publishers, want a smart young man, smart and cheap they said in their letter, to contribute to their new Encyclopædia, The Naturalist. That'll be one job for you, though it won't be much."

"But, Mr. Byrne," said Joyce, "I have no knowledge, or very little, of natural history. Certainly not enough to"

"Just too much to prevent your being too proud to take a hint or two from Goldsmith's Animated Nature, my boy, as he took several from those who preceded him. That, and a German book or two you'll find on the shelves—you understand German? That's right—will help you to all the knowledge Buncombe will require of you, or all they ought to expect for the matter of that, at ten and six the column. You can come here of a morning, you won't interfere with me, and grind away until dark, when we'll have a walk and a talk; you shall tell me all about yourself, and we'll see what more can be done, and then we'll have some food at Bliffkins's and learn all that's going on!"

"I don't know how to thank you," commenced Joyce.

"Then don't attempt to learn!" said the old man. "Does it suit you, as a begining only, mind! do you agree to try it—we shall do better things yet, I hope; but will you try it?"

"I will indeed! If you only knew"

"I do! good-night! I got up at daybreak, and ought to have been in bed long since! Good-night!"

Not since he had been in London, had Walter Joyce been so light of heart as when he closed Mr. Byrne's door behind him. Something to do at last! He felt inclined to cry out for joy; he longed for some one to whom he could impart his good fortune.