Sydney scanned the noncommittal face during the pause that followed.
“When I remembered my mother I—I couldn’t go on there. I was out of work a long time after that, and on the street two days and nights before I went—where I had declared I would not go—to the brewery to wash bottles.” He turned away with a motion of disgust. “Gee! The odor of that stale beer! I smell it yet.”
“But why didn’t you try for a chance in an orchestra?”
Max smiled. “With no proper clothes, no violin, and not a friend among people that care for music? There was no Mrs. Schmitz standing round, ready to hand me an old Cremona.”
Both were silent a moment. “But even bottle washers get too plenty in the winter when work is slack; and after I began to cough so hard the men were afraid of tuberculosis and wouldn’t work with me and I had to go. I couldn’t seem to impress any one with my superior skill as bottle washer enough to command a promotion.” He gave Sydney a crooked smile that was not all mirth.
“That’s because it was work that needed no thought.”
“That isn’t all. There was no one to take an interest in me, to show me what to do, and how, as Mrs. Schmitz does. And more than that, no one had the kind of work suited to me.”
“I reckon that has the most to do with it,” Sydney acquiesced.