"I do not know—sympathy is a wonderful medicine sometimes; it works miracles. I think, Mr. Fagg, you had better let me pay my subscription in advance—you can give me the change when you please."
She placed a sovereign in his hand. His fingers clutched it greedily. Then his conscience smote him—her kind words, her flattery, touched his heart.
"I cannot take it," he said. "Mr. Goslett warned me not to take your money. Besides (he gasped, and pointed to the subscription list)—fifty-one names! They've all paid their money for printing the book. I've eaten up all the money, and I shall eat up yours as well. Take the sovereign back—I can starve. When I am dead I would rather be remembered for my discovery than for a shameful devourer of subscription money."
She took him by the arm, and led him unresisting to the establishment.
"We must look after you, Mr. Fagg," she said. "Now I have got a beautiful room, where no one sits all day long except sometimes a crippled girl, and sometimes myself. In the evening the girls have it. You may bring your books there, if you like, and sit there to work when you please. And by the way"—she added this as if it were a matter of the very least consequence, hardly worth mentioning—"if you would like to join us any day at dinner (we take our simple meals at one), the girls, no doubt, will all think it a great honor to have so distinguished a scholar at table with them."
Mr. Fagg blushed with pleasure. Why—if the British Museum treated him with contumely; if nobody would subscribe to his book; if he was weary of asking and being refused—here was a haven of refuge, where he would receive some of the honor due to a scholar.
"And now that you are here, Mr. Fagg"—said Angela, when she had broken bread and given thanks—"you shall tell me all about your discovery. Because, you see, we are so ignorant, we girls of the working classes, that I do not exactly know what is your discovery."
He sat down and asked for a piece of paper. With this assistance he began his exposition.
"I was drawn to my investigation," he said solemnly, "by a little old book about the wisdom of the ancients; that is now five years ago, and I was then fifty-five years of age. No time to be lost (says I to myself) if anything is to be done. The more I read and the more I thought—I was in the shoemaking trade and I'm not ashamed to own it; for it's a fine business for such as are born with a head for thinking—the more I thought, I say, the more I was puzzled. For there seemed to me no way possible of reconciling what the scholars said."
"You have not told me the subject of your research yet."