“A smile broke the settled melancholy of his features.  ‘Ah,’ he said, in a more cheerful tone than he had hitherto employed, ’it does one good to think about her, it does.  She’s married to a friend of mine now, young Sam Jessop.  I slips out and gives ’em a call now and then, when Hannah ain’t round.  Lord, it’s like getting a glimpse of heaven to look into their little home.  He often chaffs me about it, Sam does.  “Well, you was a sawny-headed chunk, Josiah, you was,” he often says to me.  We’re old chums, you know, sir, Sam and me, so he don’t mind joking a bit like.’

“Then the smile died away, and he added with a sigh, ’Yes, I’ve often thought since, sir, how jolly it would have been if you could have seen your way to making it Juliana.’

“I felt I must get him back to Hannah at any cost.  I said, ’I suppose you and your wife are still living in the old place?’

“‘Yes,’ he replied, ’if you can call it living.  It’s a hard struggle with so many of us.’

“He said he did not know how he should have managed if it had not been for the help of Julia’s father.  He said the captain had behaved more like an angel than anything else he knew of.

“‘I don’t say as he’s one of your clever sort, you know, sir,’ he explained.  ’Not the man as one would go to for advice, like one would to you, sir; but he’s a good sort for all that.’

“‘And that reminds me, sir,’ he went on, ’of what I’ve come here about.  You’ll think it very bold of me to ask, sir, but—­’

“I interrupted him.  ‘Josiah,’ I said, ’I admit that I am much to blame for what has come upon you.  You asked me for my advice, and I gave it you.  Which of us was the bigger idiot, we will not discuss.  The point is that I did give it, and I am not a man to shirk my responsibilities.  What, in reason, you ask, and I can grant, I will give you.’

“He was overcome with gratitude.  ‘I knew it, sir,’ he said.  ’I knew you would not refuse me.  I said so to Hannah.  I said, “I will go to that gentleman and ask him.  I will go to him and ask him for his advice."’

“I said, ‘His what?’

“‘His advice,’ repeated Josiah, apparently surprised at my tone, ’on a little matter as I can’t quite make up my mind about.’

“I thought at first he was trying to be sarcastic, but he wasn’t.  That man sat there, and wrestled with me for my advice as to whether he should invest a thousand dollars which Julia’s father had offered to lend him, in the purchase of a laundry business or a bar.  He hadn’t had enough of it (my advice, I mean); he wanted it again, and he spun me reasons why I should give it him.  The choice of a wife was a different thing altogether, he argued.  Perhaps he ought not to have asked me for my opinion as to that.  But advice as to which of two trades a man would do best to select, surely any business man could give.  He said he had just been reading again my little book, How to be Happy, etc., and if the gentleman who wrote that could not decide between the respective merits of one particular laundry and one particular bar, both situate in the same city, well, then, all he had got to say was that knowledge and wisdom were clearly of no practical use in this world whatever.