All the loosed dogs of ill-fortune seemed to be yelping at the Margerisons’ heels at once.  Hilary, when he recovered from his influenza and went out to look for jobs, couldn’t find one.  Again and again he was curtly refused employment, by editors and others.  Every night he came home a little more bitter than the day before.  Peter too, while he lay mending of his breakages, received a letter from the place of business he adorned informing him that it would not trouble him further.  He had never been much use to it; he had been taken on at Leslie’s request and given a trial; but it could not last for ever, as Peter fair-mindedly admitted.

“Well,” he commented, “I suppose one must do something else, eventually.  But I shall put off reflecting on that till I can move about more easily.”

Hilary said, “We are being hounded out of London as we were hounded out of Venice.  It is unbearable.  What remains?”

“Nothing, that I can see at the moment,” said Peter, laughing weakly.

“Ireland,” said Peggy suddenly.  “Let’s go there.  Dublin’s worth a dozen of this hideous old black dirty place.  You could get work on ’The Nationalist,’ Hilary, I do believe, for the sub-editorship’s just been given to my cousin Larry Callaghan.  Come along to the poor old country, and we’ll try our luck again.”

“Dublin I believe to be an unspeakable place to live in,” said Hilary, but mainly from habit.  “Still, I presume one must live somewhere, so ...”

He turned to Peter.  “Where shall you and Thomas live?”

Peter flushed slightly.  He had supposed that he and Thomas were also to live in the unspeakable Dublin.

“Oh, we haven’t quite made up our minds.  I must consult Thomas about it.”

“But,” broke in Peggy, “of course you’re coming with us, my dear.  What do you mean?  You’re not surely going to desert us now, Peter?”

Peter glanced at Hilary.  Hilary said, pushing his hair, with his restless gesture, from his forehead, “Really, Peggy, we can’t drag Peter about after us all our lives; it’s hardly fair on him to involve him in all our disasters, when he has more than enough of his own.”

“Indeed and he has.  Peter’s mischancier than you are, Hilary, on the whole, and I will not leave him and Tommy to get lost or broken by themselves.  Don’t be so silly, Peter; of course you’re coming with us.”

“I think,” said Peter, “that Thomas and I will perhaps stay in London.  You see, I can’t, probably, get work on ‘The Nationalist’ and it’s doubtful what I could do in Dublin.  I suppose I can get work of a sort in London; enough to provide Thomas with milk, though possibly not all from one cow.”

“I daresay.  And who’d look after the mite, I’d like to know, while you’re earning his milk?”

“Oh, the landlady, I should think.  Everyone likes Thomas; he’s remarkably popular.”

Afterwards Hilary said to Peggy, “Really, Peggy, I see no reason why Peter should be dragged about with us in the future.  The joint menage has not, in the past, been such a success that we need want to perpetuate it.  In fact, though, of course, it is pleasant to have Peter in the house....”