"I have thought of the discomfort. It is not really so very bad. What is your idea of the life I shall have to live?"
"Why," said Lord Jocelyn, with a shudder, "you will rise at six; you will go out in working-clothes, carrying your tools, and with your apron tied round and tucked up like a missionary bishop on his way to a confirmation. You will find yourself in a workshop full of disagreeable people, who pick out unpleasant adjectives and tack them on to everything, and whose views of life and habits are—well, not your own. You will have to smoke pipes at a street corner on Sundays; your tobacco will be bad; you will drink bad beer—Harry! the contemplation of the thing is too painful."
Harry laughed.
"The reality is not quite so bad," he said. "Cabinet-makers are excellent fellows. And as for myself, I shall not work in a shop, but alone. I am offered the post of cabinet-maker in a great place where I shall have my own room to myself, and can please my own convenience as to my hours. I shall earn about tenpence an hour—say seven shillings a day, if I keep at it."
"If he keeps at it," murmured Lord Jocelyn, "he will make seven shillings a day."
"Dinner in the middle of the day, of course." Harry went on, with a cheerful smile. "At the East End everybody stokes at one. We have tea at five and supper when we can get it. A simpler life than yours."
"This is a programme of such extreme misery," said Lord Jocelyn, "that your explanations are quite insufficient. Is there, I wonder, a woman in the case?"
Harry blushed violently.
"There is a woman, then?" said his guardian triumphantly. "There always is. I might have guessed it from the beginning. Come, Harry, tell me all about it. Is it serious? Is she—can she be—at Whitechapel—a lady?"
"Yes," said Harry, "it is quite true. There is a woman, and I am in love with her. She is a dressmaker."