Alec, who had pitched on the occupation of brewer’s traveller as his ideal, at least to commence with, found on the most casual inquiry that not only experience, but influence, was required to secure the billet. He was, however, consoled for the loss, for a time, by a visit he paid casually to a horse sale-yard, where the heavy gold watch-chain and imposing air of the auctioneer took his fancy. He would be a horse salesman at all costs. He invited an habitué of the yard to take a drink, hoping to get some useful information.
He did.
“You understand horses—perhaps you know a good beast when you see one?”
“I should think I did; and a bad one, too.”
“That’s just it; you know the bad points about a horse. Now, an auctioneer doesn’t; he just sees in every animal ‘The finest beast that ever came into this yard!’ And you think, I suppose, he just has to stand there and take bids, and knock it down to the highest bidder?”
“Well, I should think so.”
“You are a soft one, and no mistake. Where did you come from? Damper must be cheap in your part. Why, you mug, the auctioneer just bids himself, and keeps her going if he sees a mug about, and then runs him as far as he thinks he will go before he knocks him down. Now, could you run a mug and not be caught ‘on the rocks’?”
Alec had to own to himself that at present that prospect was closed to him.
On the third day, ambition having cooled, they tried for more humble posts, Huey as reporter and Alec as ’bus driver, but here also they found the door closed on them.
By the end of the week their ardour had so cooled that Huey was hunting round job offices for a place as printer’s devil, and Alec found the dignity of driving a tip-dray one to be desired. But they found even in these humble walks those more qualified than themselves before them. So they spent a great part of the day walking about the Domain or sitting on the seats, resting after their tramps for work. They did not tell each other much of their experience after the first day or so. Their day’s fortune on a re-meeting was all summed up in the mutual ejaculation—