with me.  Why, I tell you he can’t add up a column of figures three inches long straight, to save his neck.  The books will be in a pretty state.  I’ll give him just ten days before they’ll have to get an expert in to straighten out things.  Hope they will; serve ’em right.  Here I am, can’t get a job to save my life, because my hair has turned and I’ve got a few more years over my head, and I can keep books better than I ever could in my life.  Good Lord!  You’d think it was what was inside a man’s head they’d be after, instead of the outside.”  He looked at Carroll.  “Guess I’ve got a little the advantage of you in age,” he said, “but I suppose that’s the matter why you were given the cold shoulder.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if you were right, sir,” replied Carroll, rather apathetically.  He was going through all this without the slightest hope, but only for the sake of feeling that he had done his utmost before he took up with the alternative which so dismayed his very soul.  He himself looked old that morning.  He had retained his youthful appearance much longer than men usually do, but as he had viewed his reflection in the glass that morning he had said to himself that he at last was showing his years.  His hair had turned visibly gray in the last few weeks; lines had deepened; and not only that, but the youthful fire had given place to the apathy and weary resignation of age.

“But you look as if you could do more and better work in an hour than that young bob-squirt could in a month,” said the man at his side.

“Very likely,” replied Carroll, indifferently.

“You don’t seem to care much about it,” the other man said.  The two had gone out of the building, and were walking slowly down the street.

“If they want young men, they do, I suppose,” Carroll said.

“Been trying long?”

“Quite a time.”

“Well, the employers are a set of G. D. fools!” said the other man.  An oath sounded horribly incongruous coming from his long, thin, benevolent mouth.

“I don’t see what you are going to do about it if they are,” Carroll replied, still with that odd patience.  It seemed to him as if he was getting a sort of fellow-feeling and intense personal knowledge of his fellow-beings, which united him to them with ties stronger than those of love.  He felt as if he more than loved this rebellious wretch beside him, as if he were one with him, only possessed of that patience which gave him a certain power to aid him.  “I suppose men have the right to employ whom they choose,” said Carroll.  “If they prefer young men who don’t know how to do the work, to old men who do, I suppose they have a right to engage them.  And they may have some show of reason for it.  I don’t see what can be done, anyway.”