Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/498

490 stand in his way. Now his health is failing, he looks too delicate for work, and no one will have him on that account. He does not complain. He goes on trying, but his daily disappointments have broken his spirit. It does seem a hopeless venture for a man of good education and exceptional abilities to find work in London."

"Sans interest," added Welsh. "Of old, interest was in the hands of the upper classes. Now it is in the hands of the lower."

"I heard a good deal of this from Thomasine," continued Arminell. "I could not bear it. I ran off to Bloomsbury to see Mrs. Bankes, and found her to be a very kind, feeling, and willing woman. She told me everything—how underfed Mr. Saltren was, how thin and shabby his clothes had become, what a bad cough he had got, and how long it was since she had been paid for her lodging."

"I made sure Mrs. Bankes would not omit to mention that."

"She is a most considerate woman. She said she had done him an egg of late, every morning, and charged him nothing for it, though eggs are at nine for a shilling, and he had had sixteen in all; so that she was, as she said, beside the cost of his lodging, nearly two shillings to the bad through these eggs—but she is a good honest soul, she told me he had worn out the soles of his boots and could not afford a new pair, and they let in the wet." Arminell stopped, she was choking.

Presently she went on, "Whilst we were talking, he came in at the house door, and I heard him cough; and then he went upstairs, with his hand on the bannisters, dragging his tired feet and his springless weight up the steep steps. He halted at each landing; he was weary and his breath failed. I listened till he had reached the very top of the house, and gone into his little attic-room where he sleeps, and reads, and eats, and dreams over his disappointments."