"Under the circumstances would you have had me take it? I feel sure that had I done so you would have thought considerably worse of me than you do; which," he added, as if to himself, "it is quite needless that you should." It was an assertion the lawyer made no attempt to refute.
"Of course you have not yet had time to decide upon anything as regards your future," he observed.
"There's one point as to which I'm quite clear--that I must earn my living by hook or by crook."
"And a very good thing for you that you should be compelled to do so, if I may be permitted to say so. You have led an idle life far too long, Mr. Brabazon."
"There I am at one with you. But whose is the fault? Not mine. As you are aware, several years ago I pestered my uncle to send me to Sandhurst; but he would not hear of it, nor of anything else which, in time, might have helped to make me independent of his purse-strings. As far as I see at present, there's only one thing left me to do, and that is to enlist as a full private in one of Her Majesty's regiments of dragoons."
"I hope you will do nothing so rash and ill-advised. A private soldier, indeed! Tut-tut!"
"Why not? I don't see that I'm fit for anything else. And sure I am that I would enlist to-morrow if I could make certain of being sent to India, or somewhere where there was a chance of a brush with the black fellows."
"I am glad to think there's no such chance open to you, for, as far as I am aware, we have not even a little war on hand just now. It is just possible--hem!--that I might be able to do something for you--of course in a very humble way--in the City, or elsewhere."
Burgo smiled a little bitterly. "Thank you all the same, Mr. Garden, but when you say that, you don't know what a rank duffer I am--you don't really. I should not be a bit of use in an office of any kind. I'm not built that way. I declare I would rather carry a sandwich-board about the streets, or break stones for a bob a day, than be perched on a stool, with a pen in my fist and a big ledger in front of me, for six hours out of the twenty-four, even if by so doing I could rake in five hundred a year, which is utterly absurd, even as a supposition."
"In any case, my serious advice to you is to do nothing in a hurry, nothing rashly. Who knows but that your uncle, when he has had more time to think over the affair, may come to the conclusion that he has dealt too hardly by you; and remembering that you are his sister's son, and that he has always taught the world to look upon you as his heir, will award you that measure of justice, and restore to you that measure of affection, of which, I trust, you have only been temporarily deprived?"