Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/485

Rh his hand and flung across the House. Next, his umbrella was wrenched from him, and with it he was struck over the back.

"You have no right in here, sir," said a porter.

"Don't mind him," shouted a dozen around. "We are heartily glad to make your acquaintance."

The horseplay was resumed, and as the young man's blood rose, and he resented the treatment, and showed fight, he was still more roughly handled, and finally found himself kicked and hustled out of the Exchange.

Giles Saltren stood on the step without, minus a hat and umbrella, and with his coat split down the back—his best coat put on to produce a good impression on employers—stood dazed and humbled, an object of derision to match-boys and flower-girls, who danced about him, with words and antics of mockery.

Presently an old white-haired stockbroker, who came out of the Exchange, noticed him, and stopped and spoke to him, and bade him not be angry. What had occurred was due to his having intruded where he had no right to be. Jingles answered that he had gone there because he was in quest of employment, whereupon he was told he might just as well have jumped into the Thames because he desired engagement on a penny steamer.

"Young gentleman," said the broker, "it is of no use your looking for employment in our line of business. We have a Clerks' Provident Fund, to which every clerk out of employ subscribes; and if a broker wants a man at forty, sixty, a hundred, two hundred pounds, he applies to the secretary of the Provident Fund, who furnishes him with the man he wants out of the number of those then disengaged. You have no experience, or you would not have ventured into the House. If I want an errand boy, I take on the son of a clerk. You have, I fear, no connexions in the line to speak a word for you! You have been to the University, do you say?"