Mr. Tobias Hendry was a jobmaster and cab proprietor, well known to Burgo, who, in the course of his career, had had many a "trap" from him on hire--an elastic term which must be understood as including vehicles of various kinds. The only two horses Burgo had ever owned had been bought for him by Mr. Hendry, and when hard compulsion, in the shape of certain racing liabilities which he found a difficulty in meeting, had compelled him to part from them, it was "Toby H."--as he was generally called among his intimates--who, succeeded in disposing of them for him at a not too ruinous loss.
Mr. Hendry happened to be in the yard when Burgo drove in, but when the flaps of the hansom were flung back and Joey Bunch, with his ensanguined visage, stumbled out of the interior, and when, by the light of the lamp over the stable door, he recognised the driver, his face put on such an expression of comic perplexity that Burgo could not help laughing aloud.
"Been up to some of your little games, Mr. Brabazon, I reckon," said the jobmaster dryly. He was an elderly, wiry, rather undersized man, with iron-gray hair and short side whiskers to match.
"For once you are mistaken, Mr. Hendry," replied Burgo. And therewith he proceeded, as briefly as possible, to put the other in possession of the facts of the case.
"I'm really very much obliged to you, Mr. Brabazon," said the jobmaster. "It isn't every gentleman that would put himself to the trouble you have. As for Bunch, he's the most steady-going driver I have. I hope there's nothing serious the matter with him, but, of course, I must have him seen by a doctor before I can let him go out again. Yes, Mr. Brabazon, I'm very much obliged to you."
"But, as it happens, it is I who want to be obliged to you, Mr. Hendry."
"In what way can I serve you, sir?"
"If your office is empty, let us go in there for a few minutes." A sudden resolution (at the time it seemed to him almost like an inspiration) had come to him while he was driving Joey Bunch home.
The jobmaster led the way, and as soon as the office door was shut behind them Burgo said: "I don't know whether you are aware that my uncle, Sir Everard Clinton, has discarded me--cast me off--will have nothing more to do with me. But such is the unpleasant fact. It's not because I have kicked over the traces, or done anything to offend him, but simply because he has taken to himself a wife half his own age who, to serve some purpose of her own, has succeeded in poisoning his mind and setting him against me. Now, as I have very little money, and can't live on air, it's evident I must find work of some kind. The worst of it is that I've been brought up to nothing, and have no aptitude or gift of any kind. Under those circumstances what is a man to do? That is a question, Mr. Hendry, which, if I've put to myself once, I have a hundred times. At length I have decided that there are only two things I can do with any degree of credit to myself or others, and those are, riding and driving. But where's the good of either of them to a fellow who has neither a horse nor a trap to call his own?"
"Don't know, I'm sure, Mr. Brabazon, unless he makes use of the horses and traps of his friends. And a good many young men do that, sir, who are in the same predicament as yourself."