‘It’s all very well for you, you glass-eyed old reprobate,’ said Pauer, speaking in English. ‘I can understand the boy if you can’t.’
‘You!’ gasped Darco, with a new spurt of laughter. ‘You!’
‘Yes,’ said Pauer, ‘I.’ His tone was angry, and his friend, after a humorous glance at him, poured out a glass of beer and drank it, but said no more. ‘Stay there till I come back, said Pauer a minute or so later. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy.’
Darco made a renewed onslaught on the cold boiled beef, as if he had been famishing. Paul sat still and stared at the fire. He was a compendium of shames, and whether he were more ashamed of his crime or his confession he could not tell. Pauer came back, accompanied by a man who looked like a hostler. The man carried a lighted candle and chewed thoughtfully at a straw.
‘You’d better go to bed now,’ said Pauer. ‘This man will show you the way. When you’re undressed, give him your clothes, and he’ll have them dried and brushed for you by morning.’
Paul obeyed, and when he had handed over his clothes to the hostler’s care he went to bed, and listened for awhile to the murmuring voices of Pauer and Darco, who were now immediately beneath him. His last resolve before he went to sleep was that in the morning he would go into the town and try to find work at his own trade; but he had begun to learn that he was born to drift, and he drifted. His clothes were brought to him clean and dry, and he turned the false cuffs and the collar he wore, so that he made himself in his own way sufficiently presentable, and just as he had finished dressing Pauer came into his room. There was a plentiful breakfast downstairs, and it was of a better quality than the aspect of the house might have seemed to warrant Paul did fall justice to it, and when the cloth was cleared Darco laid writing materials on the table. He said that his sight was failing, and that he had been advised to rest his eyes as much as possible. He would be obliged if Paul would write a letter for him from dictation. He dictated a lengthy business letter setting forth the terms on which he was willing to accept the management of a theatrical provincial tour, and when it was finished he asked Pauer to read it.
‘That’s all right,’ said Pauer. ‘Good legible fist. Well spelled. Punctuation and capitals all right.’
‘Ferry well,’ said Darco. ‘If the younk man wants a chop, I can give him one. Dwenty shillings a veek, and meals at the mittle of the tay.’
‘What is the work?’ Paul asked.
‘To be my brivate zecretary,’ said Darco, ‘and to dravel with me through the gountry.’