“I’m really glad to see your father’s son,” he said. “Sorry though to hear that he has had a run of bad luck. Very bad luck it must be, too,” he added, “to let you come out here.”
“Indeed, sir; but I mean to make my for—that is, I want to make my living.”
“Ay, young man, living’s more like it; and I wish I could help you. There’s a wave of depression over this side of our little island at present, and I don’t know that any office in town has a genteel situation to offer you.”
Archie’s soul-heat sank a degree or two.
“You think, sir, that—”
“I think that you would have done better at home. It would be cruel of me not to tell you the truth. Now I’ll give you an example. We advertised for a clerk just a week since—”
“I wish I’d been here.”
“My young friend, you wouldn’t have had the ghost of a chance. We had five-and-thirty to pick and choose from, and we took the likeliest. I’m really sorry. If anything should turn up, where shall I communicate?”
Where should he communicate? And this was his father’s best friend, from whom the too sanguine father expected Archie would have an invitation to dinner at once, and a general introduction to Sydney society.
“Oh, it is no great matter about communicating, Mr Berry; aw!—no matter at all! I can afford to wait a bit and look round me. I—aw!—good morning, sir.”