"It seems to me, Henry," he said at length, "that it's a case of ability rather than of will. You say you are ready to do anything; the question is—what can you do?"
"Not many things," confessed Henry, in a humbler voice; "but I can learn, Uncle Spencer—I will do my best to learn."
"How old are you, Henry?"
"Twenty-one."
Harry was about to add "yesterday," but refrained from making his statement of fact an appeal for sympathy; for the man in him was coming steadily to the front.
"Then you would leave school in the Sixth Form?"
Harry had to shake his head.
"Perhaps you were on the Modern Side? All the better if you were!"
"No, I was not; I left in the form below the Sixth."
"Then you know nothing about book-keeping, for example?"