I did not tell Doubleday that I did get my “grub” there, and left him to infer what he pleased by my silence.
“Anyhow,” said he, “if you must hang on there, there’s nothing to prevent your knocking about a bit of an evening. What do you generally go in for when your friend Bull’s-eye’s at home? I mean what do you do with yourselves of an evening?”
“Oh,” said I, “they’ve got a parlour at Mrs Nash’s, and books—”
Once more Doubleday laughed loud, “What! a parlour and books included for three-and-six a week! My eye! young ’un, you’re in luck; and you mean to say you—oh, I say, what a treat!—do you hear, Crow?”
“Please!” I exclaimed, “what’s the use of telling any one?”
“Eh—oh, all right, I won’t tell any one; but think of you and Bull’s-eye sitting in a three-and-six parlour without carpets or wall-papers reading Tim Goodyboy’s Sunday Picture-book, and all that.”
I smiled faintly, vexed though I was. “They’ve novels there,” I said, grandly.
“No! and all for three-and-six too! No wonder you’re snug. Well, no accounting for tastes. I wonder you don’t ask me to come and spend an evening with you. It would be a treat!”
The result of this conversation and a good many of a similar character was to make me thoroughly discontented with, and more than half ashamed of, my lot. And the more I mixed with Doubleday and his set, the more I felt this. They all had the appearance of such well-to-do fellows, to whom expense seemed no object. They talked in such a scoffing way of the “poor beggars” who couldn’t “stand” the luxuries they indulged in, or dress in the fashionable style they affected.
After six months, the clothes with which I had come to London were beginning to look the worse for wear, and this afflicted me greatly just at a time when I found myself constantly in the society of these grandees. I remember one entire evening at Doubleday’s sitting with my left arm close in to my side because of a hole under the armpit; and on another occasion borrowing Mrs Nash’s scissors to trim the ends of my trousers before going to spend the evening at Daly’s.