“The stars in their courses came out of them to fight against me, you see. Well, I went back to town and held horses. I fared sumptuously every day at coffee-stalls, or at Lockhart’s when I was in funds. I draw a veil over this period. I was submerged. Then, in hospital, I met a very decent fellow who got me a berth in Miss Inez Montroni’s travelling company, where I lived gaily on a pound a week till that memorable Sawbath which I broke by knocking up. I was discovered by a kind angel: adsum. Are you insured against fire?”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of ill-luck!” said Farquhar.
“Aren’t you, now? I detect a kind of arrogance, a sort of healthy scepticism in your tone, my friend. I wonder what you are afraid of? Not much, I guess.”
“Was your ill-health hereditary?” asked Farquhar, who as a temperance advocate studied the question of transmission.
“Don’t know. My parents died ere I was born, and never saw their son, you see. I inherited my bad luck, anyway.
‘Oh, Keith of Ravelston,
The sorrows of thy line!’”
“It hasn’t depressed your spirits.”
“Oh, I don’t believe in letting trouble beat you.”
“You talk as though trouble were a living personality.”