"It does upset you if you get it badly. What did you get, four hundred?"
"Two thousand."
"Good Lord. That's usually fatal. How did you manage it?"
Carstairs was silent for a moment; he looked at Smith who was down below in the engine room, then he turned and faced Thompson.
"It was my own fault. I was fooling about, trying some experiments, you know—and tired. It knocked me over. Smith and Darwen brought me round; Smith was jolly decent. You needn't say anything to him about it if you don't mind, it was his request." He looked Thompson steadily in the eyes like a practised liar.
Thompson smiled with a sort of admiration and pleasure. "You'll be more careful next time," he said.
"I shall, very careful," Carstairs answered, and Thompson smiled; he started to go away, but turned at the head of the steps.
"I shouldn't be in a hurry to leave this job if I were you. If a vacancy occurs, I think I can promise you a Shift Engineer job here." He went down the steps.
Carstairs felt a glow of exultation. "Thanks very much," he said.
It has been observed that misfortunes never come singly, it is equally true that good fortune comes in lumps also. The observant man like the successful gambler may gain much profit by regulating his actions to the ebb and flow of fortune. What appears to the casual or timid observer to be a particularly "long shot" is often the outcome of close observation, and not the mere freak of a desperate plunger. The tide of affairs never sets either way without warning. The watchful man, like the careful mariner, knows fairly well what to expect. Carstairs was a particularly close observer, and after Thompson's remarks and other things, he had an idea that the luck was flowing his way again; he was not much surprised therefore to find a letter waiting for him next morning from Darwen telling him of a vacancy at Southville, and urging him to run down and see the chief. "I have so strongly recommended you that I think the job is yours," he said.