Nothing to do! But he must and would do something. Why should he starve in a city of plenty? He had arms and hands, if he hadn’t a head. Indeed, he had begun of late to believe that his head, which he used to think so much of, was the least important part of his body. He caught himself feeling his forearm and his biceps. Why this latter had got smaller and beautifully less of late. He had to shut his fist hard to make it perceptible to touch. This was worse and worse, he thought. He would not be able to lift a fifty-six if he wanted to before long, or have strength enough left to wield a stable broom if he should be obliged to go as gardener to Winslow.
“What next, I wonder?” he said to himself. “First I lose my brains, if ever I had any, and now I have lost my biceps; the worst loss last.”
He lit his candle, and took up the newspaper.
“I’ll pocket my pride, and take a porter’s situation,” he murmured. “Let us see now. Hullo! what is this? ‘Apprentice Wanted—the drug trade—splendid opening to a pushing youngster.’ Well, I am a pushing youngster. ‘Premium required.’ I don’t care, I have a bit of money left, and I’ll pay it like a man if there is enough. Why the drug trade is grand. Sydney drug-stores beat Glasgow’s all to pieces. Druggists and drysalters have their carriages and mansions, their town and country houses. Hurrah! I’ll be something yet!”
He blew out the candle, and jumped into bed. The gentle goddess required no further wooing. She took him in her lap, and he went off at once like a baby.
Rap—rap—rap—rap!
“Hullo! Yes; coming, Sarah; coming.”
It was broad daylight; and when he admitted Sarah at last, with the breakfast-tray, she told him she had been up and down fifty times, trying to make him hear. Sarah was given to a little exaggeration at times.
“It was all very well for a gent like he,” she said, “but there was her a-slavin’ and a-toilin’, and all the rest of it.”
“Well, well, my dear,” he cut in, “I’m awfully sorry, I assure you.”