“My dear Agatha, I’ve had enough shocks during the last few weeks to knock the flippancy out of a Congregational minister.  In November I was condemned to die within six months.  The sentence was final and absolute.  I thought I would do the kind of good one can’t do with a lifetime in front of one, and I wasted all my substance in riotous giving.  In the elegant phraseology of high society I am stone-broke.  As my training has not fitted me to earn my living in high-falutin ways, I must earn it in some humble capacity.  Therefore, if you see me call at your house for the water rate, you’ll understand that I am driven to that expedient by necessity and not by degradation.”

Naturally I had to elaborate this succinct statement before my sister could understand its full significance.  Then dismay overwhelmed her.  Surely something could be done.  The fortunes of Jane and herself were at my disposal to set me on my feet again.  We were brother and sisters; what was theirs was mine; they couldn’t see me starve.  I thanked her for her affection—­the dear creatures would unhesitatingly have let me play ducks and drakes with their money, but I explained that though poor, I was still proud and prized the independence of the tax-collector above the position of the pensioner of Love’s bounty.

“Tom must get you something to do,” she declared.

“Tom must do nothing of the kind.  Let me say that once and for all,” I returned peremptorily.  “I’ve made my position clear to you, because you’re my sister and you ought to be spared any further misinterpretation of my actions.  But to have you dear people intriguing after billets for me would be intolerable.”

“But what are you going to do?” she cried, wringing her hands.

“I’m going for my first omnibus ride to-morrow,” said I heroically.

Upon which assertion Rogers entered announcing that her ladyship’s carriage had arrived.  A while later I accompanied her downstairs and along the arcade.

“I shall be so miserable, thinking of you, poor old boy,” she said affectionately, as she bade me good-bye.

“Don’t, I am going to enjoy myself for the first time in my life.”

These were “prave ’orts,” but I felt doleful enough when I re-entered the chambers where I had lived in uncomplaining luxury for fourteen years.

“There’s no help for it,” I murmured.  “I must get rid of the remainder of my lease, sell my books and pictures and other more or less expensive household goods, dismiss Rogers and Bingley, and go and live on thirty shillings a week in a Bloomsbury boarding-house.  I think,” I continued, regarding myself in the Queen Anne mirror over the mantelpiece, “I think that it will better harmonise with my fallen fortunes if I refrain from waxing the ends of my moustache.  There ought to be a modest droop about the moustache of a tax-collector.”