"Now, Gregory," Fielding said, "let me hear what you have been doing first."
Robert, in reply, related pretty accurately the whole of his life since he had left London.
"Well, that is a rum start," his companion said when he had finished his story. "And you really think that you will some day come in for all this money?"
"I do," Robert answered. "As I have told you they are trying down there now, and have a good chance; but if that fails, I mean to try for it myself. And now what have you been doing?"
"The easiest way to answer would be to tell you what I have not been doing. You left us in the winter, and I held on, as I had been doing before, till the next Derby Day; but I dropped so much upon that, that I had to make myself scarce for a bit. Then I came back again, and set to work to earn my living, and very hard work I found it."
"I should think so," Robert Gregory put in. "I have been trying to get something to do for the last three months, and I am no nearer, as far as I can see, than when I began. How did you set about it?"
"To tell you the truth, Robert, I found it rather up-hill work at first. I worked for the papers for a bit,—went to all the fires, and the inquests, and the hospitals, and sent accounts to all the dailies. Of course at first they did not often put them in, still they did sometimes, and after a month or two they came to take them pretty regularly. At last I did what I really very seldom did do; but I was very hard-up, and I sent an account of a fire which only existed in my imagination. Well, it turned out that there was a row about it, and of course that put an end to that line. It was winter then, and I was very hard-up, and was glad to earn a few shillings a week as super at one of the pantomimes. Then I happened to meet with a man with a few pounds, and together we set up a very profitable business—advertising to find situations for clerks and servants. They paid us five shillings to enter their names in our books; then we answered every advertisement that appeared in any of the papers for that sort of thing, and sent them to look after the situations. If they got them, they paid us thirty per cent, on the first year's earnings, down on the nail. There were three or four of us in that game. I kept the head office, and they took places in other parts, and each of them wanted clerks at £150 a year. It was a capital dodge, and we made a lot of money; but at last it got blown upon, and we had to give it up.
"Then I did the ladies employment business. Lessons given for a guinea, and constant employment guaranteed when the art was learnt. We used to send them a book on illuminating, which by the gross cost us twopence each. None of the ladies, as it turned out, ever became perfect enough for us to give them employment; but that was their fault you know, not ours. Well, that paid uncommonly well for a bit. After that, I tried no end of moves, and did sometimes well, sometimes badly; still I was not often without a sovereign in my pocket. At last I took up my present line; I have been at it now a year and a half, and I mean to stick to it."
"What is it?" Robert Gregory asked rather curiously, for his companion had the look of a well-to-do man, although perhaps rather of a sporting cut. He wore a good substantial great-coat with a velvet collar, a very good hat, put rather on one side of his head, and a quiet scarf, with a gold pin representing a jockey's cap and whip.
"I am a betting man," Fielding said. "I make a book on all the races. I have certain places—public-houses, quiet streets, and so on—where I am always to be found at regular hours of the day, and I do a very fair business."