“Let me be your banker,” I offered, in all sincerity; “I——”
“No; I don’t want coin so much as I want a way to earn some. Now, if you’ll put me in the way of getting work,—anything that pays pretty well,—I’ll be obliged, sir, and I’ll be on my way.”
His smile was of that frank, chummy sort that makes for sympathy and I agreed to help him in any way I could think of.
“What can you do?” I asked, preliminarily.
“Dunno. Have to investigate myself, and learn what are my latent talents. Doubtless their name is legion. But I’ve nailed one of them. I can draw! Witness these masterpieces!”
He held up some sheets of scribble paper on which I saw several careful and well-done mechanical drawings.
“You were a draughtsman!” I exclaimed, “in that lost life of yours.”
“I don’t know. I may have been. Anyway, these things are all right.”
“What are they?”
“Not much of anything. They’re sort of designs for wall-paper or oilcloth. See? Merely suggestions, you know, but this one, repeated, would make a ripping study for a two-toned paper.”