A short while after this, and when Roland was far more at his wits' end for a shilling than he had ever been at Port Natal--for there he had no appearance to keep up, and here he had; there he could encamp out in the sand, here he couldn't--Lord Carrick arrived suddenly in London, in a little trouble as usual. Some warm-hearted friend had induced his good-natured lordship to accept a short bill, and afterwards treacherously left him to meet it. So Lord Carrick was again en route for the Continent, until his men of business, Greatorex and Greatorex, could arrange the affair for him by finding the necessary money. Halting in London a couple of days, to confer with them on that and other matters--for Lord Carrick's affairs altogether were complicated and could not be touched upon in an hour--Roland seized on the opportunity to prefer the application. And this brings us to the present time.
When under a cloud, and not quite certain that the streets were safe, the Earl was wont to eschew his hotel at the west end, and put up at a private one in a more obscure part. Roland, having had notice of his arrival, clattered in to breakfast with him on the morning of the second day, and entered on his petition forthwith--to be put into something.
"Anything for a start, Uncle Carrick," he urged. "No matter how low I begin: I'll soon go along swimmingly, once I get the start. I can't go about here, you know, with my toes out, as I have over yonder. It's awful work getting a dinner only once a week. I've had thoughts of crying hot pies in Poplar."
To judge by the breakfast Roland was eating, he had been a week without that meal as well as dinner. Lord Carrick, looking at the appetite with admiration, sat pulling his white whiskers in perplexity; for the grey hair of seven years ago had become white now. His heart was good to give Roland the post of Prime Minister, or any other trifling office, but he did not see his way clear to accomplish it.
"Me boy, there's only one thing I can do for ye just now," he said after silently turning the matter about in all its bearings, and hearing the explanation of the Poplar project. "Ye know I must be off tomorrow by the early French steamer, and I can't go about looking after places today, even if I knew where they could be picked up, which I don't. I must leave ye to Greatorex and Greatorex."
"What will they do?" asked Roland.
"You can come along with me there, and see."
Accordingly, when the Earl of Carrick went forth to his appointed interview that day with Mr. Greatorex, he presented Roland; and simply told the old lawyer that he must put him in a way of getting along, until he, Lord Carrick, was in funds again. Candid and open as ever Roland could be, the Earl made no secret whatever of that gentleman's penniless state, enlarging on the fact that to go dinnerless, as a rule, could not be good for him, and that he should not exactly like to see him set up as a hot-pie man in Poplar. Mr. Greatorex, perhaps nearly as much taken to as Sir Richard Yorke had been on a similar occasion, glanced at his son Bede who was present, and hesitated. He did not refuse point blank--as he might have done by almost anybody else. Lord Carrick was a valuable client, his business yearly bringing in a good share of feathers to the Greatorex nest, and old Mr. Greatorex was sensible of the fact. Still, he did not see what he could do for one who, like Roland, was in the somewhat anomalous position of being nephew to an earl and a baronet, but reduced to contemplate the embarking in the hot-pie trade.
"We might give him a stool in our office, Lord Carrick, for it happens that we are a clerk short: and pay him--pay him--twenty shillings a week. As a temporary thing, of course."
To one who had not had a dinner for days, twenty shillings a week seems an ample fortune; and Roland started up and grasped the elder lawyer's hand.