Page:Short Stories (1912).djvu/64

Rh My brother and I were about the same size, so my clothes fitted him all right. "Where shall I go?" I asked him.

"I have a room up in Maida Vale, near dad's old church. Come there with me, old chap."

So I went.

We had sorry stories to tell each other. He was down to his last penny, and I, after the ship paid off, found myself the possessor of just eight pounds in the world. We divided the money and then discussed the past. Poor old fellow! he's dead now. He had made just as big a mess of life as I had, worse even, for he had greater chances which he had thrown to the winds. He had gone to America with McHenry, the great railroad magnate, and might have done anything, for he was a splendid engineer. But he had got bitten by an absurd stage fever and thrown up everything to follow the fortunes of a company of players in Toronto. How many years he had been roaming about doing what he could to keep body and soul together he didn't say. But, at my father's death, he had come home, and when we met on that pelting wet August morning he was literally strapped.

We discussed the question what was to be done.

"I can't get anything to do. The theatrical managers won't look at me," he told me. The truth was, poor chap, he never was a good actor.

"I must go back to engineering," he admitted, "but how—how—how? Every billet seems to be full."

He scanned the columns of the Daily Telegraph. There were lots of "Wanteds." He told me he had answered hundreds until he was sick of being turned down and of getting no answers to his letters.

In the middle of one column my eyes fell upon the following advertisement, which I read out aloud: