Richard Dauncey sighed.
“You needn’t rub it in. My appearance is against me in business and in every way. I can’t help it. I have troubles.”
“They are at an end,” Jacob declared. “Don’t jump out of the window or do anything ridiculous, my friend, but sit still and listen. You have been starving with a wife and two children on three pounds a week. Your salary from to-day is ten pounds a week, with expenses.”
Dauncey shook his head.
“You are not well this morning, man.”
Jacob produced the letters and handed them over to his friend, who read them with many exclamations of wonder. When he returned them, there was a little flush in his face.
“I congratulate you, Jacob,” he said heartily. “You are one of those men who have the knack of keeping a stiff upper lip, but I know what you have suffered.”
“Congratulate yourself, too, old chap,” Jacob enjoined, holding out his hand. “Exactly what I am going to do in the future I haven’t quite made up my mind, but this I do know—we start a fresh life from lunch-time to-day, you and I. You can call yourself my secretary, for want of a better description, until we settle down. Your screw will be ten pounds a week, and if you refuse the hundred pounds I am going to offer you at our luncheon table at Simpson’s to-day, I shall knock you down.”
Dauncey apologised shamefacedly, a few minutes later, for a brief period of rare weakness.
“It’s the wife, old chap,” he explained, as they drew near the terminus. “You see, I married a little above my station, but there was never any money, and the two kids came and there didn’t seem enough to clothe them properly, or feed them properly, or put even a trifle by in case anything should happen to me. Life’s been pretty hard, Jacob, and I can’t make friends. Or rather I never have been able to until you came along.”