"But it wasn't always like that, Joe," he told his companion, as they paced the deck, basking in the sun. "Your Uncle Andrew wasn't always the stylish dog he looks now. Not by a long way. I've been on my beam ends."
"Ah! Exactly."
"Know what that means?"
"To a certain extent. When you came home last Christmas I was down in the dumps. Absolutely on my beam ends."
Andrew Provost turned to look with some astonishment at his nephew. He inspected him critically from the top of his glossy Homburg hat to the well-polished brown shoes which he wore. And the face finally drew all his attention.
"Impossible!" he declared politely. "Joe on his beam ends! Joe in the dumps—never!"
"True as possible, sir—I was desperate," repeated Joe, his face grave for that moment.
"Well, well, perhaps so. I'm forgetting. I was young like you when I was down. Young fellows make light of such matters. It's as well, perhaps, or the world wouldn't go along half so easily. But I'd never have thought it, Joe. You never said a word to me; you look so jolly."
No one would have denied the fact. Joe Gresson looked what he was, a handsome, jovial fellow of twenty-seven. Fair and tall, and broader than his uncle, he had deep-set eyes which gave to his smiling face an air of cleverness. And the young fellow was undoubtedly clever. An engineer by profession, he had graduated at Cambridge, had passed through the shops, the drawing office, and other departments of one of the biggest engineering concerns in England, and had finally struck out a line for himself. He had been experimenting for the past four years.
"What's the good of being miserable because things don't go right, Uncle?" he said with a smile. "I've told you how I took up engineering. Well, I thought I had a good idea. I left the shops at Barrow and worked on my own. Thanks to the few thousands I possessed I was able to carry out some important experiments."