"I do not know. Anything which will help us to live."
"Anything? You may teach French like De Laisne, or fencing like Du Vallon, or dancing like the Marquis de Beau Castel. I offered him a clerkship."
"Offer me one," said De Courval. "I write a good hand. I speak and write English. I can learn, and I will."
Wynne took stock, as he would have said, of the rather serious face, of the eyes of gray which met his look, of a certain eagerness in the young man's prompt seizure of a novel opportunity.
"Can you serve under a plain man like my head clerk, run errands, obey without question—in a word, accept a master?"
"I have had two bitter ones, sir, poverty and misfortune."
"Can you come at eight thirty, sweep out the office, make the fires at need in winter, with an hour off, at noon, and work till six? Such is our way here."
The young man flushed. "Is that required?"
"I did it for a year, Vicomte, and used the sword for five years, and came back to prosper."