“I don’t see what he gets out of it anyhow.”
“He doesn’t want anything, you silly.”
“I want to think this out,” said Sam, “there is something I’ve always wanted since I was a kiddy, but I want to think. Row on.”
This was intelligible and encouraging. Christopher’s sense of flatness gave way a little. He pulled steadily, trying to make out what had so dashed him in Sam’s reception of the great news. He had not yet learnt how exceptional is the mind that can accept a favour graciously.
After nearly ten minutes’ silence Sam spoke again. “Well, then, I’d like to be a grocer,” and straightway pulled furiously.
“What?” gasped Christopher, feeling the bottom story of his card house tottering to a fall.
“It’s like this. I don’t mind telling you—much—though I’ve never told nobody before. When I was a bit of a chap, mother, she used to take me out shopping in the evenings. We went to pokey little shops, but we used to pass a fine, big shop—four glass windows—it has six now—and great lights and mahogany counters and little rails, and balls for change, tiled floor, no sawdust. Every time I saw it I says to myself, ‘When I’m a man I’ll have a place like that.’ I tried to get a job there, but I couldn’t—they made too many family inquiries, you see,” he added bitterly; “well, if I could get ’prenticed to a place like that ... might be head man some day....” He began 150 whistling with forced indifference, queerly conscious that the whole of his life seemed packed in that little boat—waiting. The boat had drifted into a side eddy. Christopher sat with his head on his hands, wondering with his surface consciousness if the planks at his feet were three or four inches wide, but at last he brushed aside the last card of his demolished palace and recalled his promise to Cæsar to leave Sam as free and unbiased in choice as he had been himself.
“That would be quite easy to manage,” he said with assumed heartiness, “it’s—only too easy. Only you must be a partner or something. Oh, oh. A white apron. I’ll buy my tea and bacon of you when I’ve a house of my own!”
“All right,” grinned Sam. “I’ll have great rows of red and gold canisters and—and brass fittings everywhere—not your plated stuff for me—solid brass and marble-topped counters. But it won’t come off,” he added dejectedly, “things like that never do.”
“But it will,” persisted Christopher impatiently, “just as my going to Dusseldorf is coming off.”