“‘You’re thinking of the hotel, I suppose,’ says she.  ’Perhaps you are right.  My customers are mostly an old-fashioned class; it’s probable enough they might not like you.  You had better suggest something else.’

“‘I could hardly be an under-waiter,’ says he.

“‘Perhaps not,’ says she; ’your manners strike me as a bit too familiar for that.’

“Then he thought he’d try sarcasm.

“‘Perhaps you’d fancy my being the boots,’ says he.

“‘That’s more reasonable,’ says she.  ’You couldn’t do much harm there, and I could keep an eye on you.’

“‘You really mean that?’ says he, starting to put on his dignity.

“But she cut him short by ringing the bell.

“‘If you think you can do better for yourself,’ she says, ’there’s an end of it.  By a curious coincidence the place is just now vacant.  I’ll keep it open for you till to-morrow night; you can turn it over in your mind.’  And one of the page boys coming in she just says ‘Good-morning,’ and the interview was at an end.

“Well, he turned it over, and he took the job.  He thought she’d relent after the first week or two, but she didn’t.  He just kept that place for over fifteen months, and learnt the business.  In the house he was James the boots, and she Mrs. Wrench the landlady, and she saw to it that he didn’t forget it.  He had his wages and he made his tips, and the food was plentiful; but I take it he worked harder during that time than he’d ever worked before in his life, and found that a landlady is just twice as difficult to please as the strictest landlord it can be a man’s misfortune to get under, and that Mrs. Wrench was no exception to the rule.

“At the end of the fifteen months she sends for him into the office.  He didn’t want telling by this time; he just stood with his hat in his hand and waited respectful like.

“‘James,’ says she, after she had finished what she was doing, ’I find I shall want another waiter for the coffee-room this season.  Would you care to try the place?’

“‘Thank you, Mrs. Wrench,’ he answers; ’it’s more what I’ve been used to, and I think I’ll be able to give satisfaction.’

“‘There’s no wages attached, as I suppose you know,’ continues she; ’but the second floor goes with it, and if you know your business you ought to make from twenty-five to thirty shillings a week.’

“Thank you, Mrs. Wrench; that’ll suit me very well,’ replies he; and it was settled.

“He did better as a waiter; he’d got it in his blood, as you might say; and so after a time he worked up to be head-waiter.  Now and then, of course, it came about that he found himself waiting on the very folks that he’d been chums with in his classy days, and that must have been a bit rough on him.  But he’d taken in a good deal of sense since then; and when one of the old sort, all rings and shirt-front, dining there one Sunday evening, started chaffing him, Jimmy just shut him up with a quiet:  ’Yes, I guess we were both a bit out of our place in those days.  The difference between us now is that I have got back to mine,’ which cost him his tip, but must nave been a satisfaction to him.