"Well, I was going to try to get you a job something like your last, but you're a difficult man to find a job for. I won't ask you whether you know you're extraordinary; of course you know you are; and I'm going, if I can, to give you a chance—a real chance—not like that other—those cut-throats—what's their name."
I had told him about Rixon Tebb & Masters' and the rest of it.
"I've a bit of a pull here and there," he went on sleepily. "There's the 'Freight and Ballast Company'—I know a couple of their men—but we'll talk about that in the morning. I'm off to bed. Hope they've made you comfortable?"
It does not come within the scope of my present tale to speak of my later rapid rise; but I may say now that I owed my chance to Pettinger and to the berth he got me, with the coming of winter, in the offices of the "F. B. C."
I remained in his house all that week; then, on the Friday evening, I took a return ticket to town in order to attend my class.
I had not been half-an-hour in the college that evening before I was aware that something had happened. Archie Merridew was not there, but Evie was, and so was Kitty Windus. I went through my work as usual, and then, at half-past nine, sought Kitty. It was she who told me the news.
"You've not heard, have you?" she asked, with a glance towards the senior students' room, through which Evie had just passed. Again she was, in some manner I could not understand, eager, reserved, apprehensive and fidgety all at once.
"Heard what?" I asked.
"About Evie. It's come off. She and Archie are properly engaged."
From that moment dated a division of me into two separate men, of which I shall have more to say presently.