"Oh, Lord!" grunted Mr. Byrne, "of course there is; there always is in such cases! Blind old bat I was not to see it at first! Ah, she was left lamenting, and all the rest of it; quite knocks the Australian idea on the head? Now let me think what can be done for you here! There's Buncombe and Co., the publishers, want a smart young man, smart and cheap they said in their letter, to contribute to their new Encyclopaedia, the Naturalist. That'll be one job for you, though it won't be much."
"But, Mr. Byrne," said Joyce, "I have no knowledge, or very little, of natural history. Certainly not enough to----"
"Not too much to prevent your being too proud to take a hint or two from Goldsmith's Animated Nature,my boy, as he took several from those who preceded him. That, and a German book or two you'll find on the shelves--you understand German? that's right--will help you to all the knowledge Buncombe will require of you, or all they ought to expect, for the matter of that, at ten-and-six the column. You can come here of a morning--you won't interfere with me--and grind away until dark, when we'll have a walk and a talk; you shall tell me all about yourself, and we'll see what more can be done, and then we'll have some food at Bliffkins's and learn all that's going on!"
"I don't know how to thank you," commenced Joyce.
"Then don't attempt to learn!" said the old man. "Does it suit you, as a beginning only, mind! do you agree to try it--we shall do better things yet, I hope; but will you try it?"
"I will indeed! If you only knew----"
"I do: good night! I got up at daybreak, and ought to have been in bed long since. Good night!"
Not since he had been in London, had Walter Joyce been so light of heart as when he closed Mr. Byrne's door behind him. Something to do at last! He felt inclined to cry out for joy; he longed for some one to whom he could impart his good fortune.
His good fortune! As he sat upon his wretched bed in his tiny lodging, luxurious words rang in his ears. "And the chance of achieving fame and fortune, keep that in the foreground!" Fame and fortune! And he had been overjoyed because he had obtained a chance of earning a few shillings as a bookseller's hack, a chance for which he was indebted to a handicraftsman. But a poor first step towards fame and fortune, Marian would think! He understood how utter had been her inexperience and his own; he had learned the wide distance between the fulfilment of such hopes as theirs, and the best of the bare possibilities which the future held for them, and the pain which this knowledge brought him, more for the sake of his own share in it, was doubly keen for hers. It was very hard for Walter Joyce to have to suffer the terrible disappointment and disenchantment of experience; but it was far harder for him to have to cause her to share them. Marian would indeed think it a "poor first step." He little knew how much more decisive a one she was about to take herself.