“Hollo!” exclaimed the old man, chuckling.  “Why, I should have thought you’d made your fortune by this time.  Poetry doesn’t pay, it seems?”

“It doesn’t.  One has to buy experience.  It’s no good saying that I ought to have been guided by you five years ago.  Of course I wish I had been, but it wasn’t possible.  The question is, do you care to help me now?”

“What’s your idea?” asked Abraham, playing with his watch-guard, a smile as of inward triumph flitting about his lips.

“I have none.  I only know that I’ve been half-starved for years in the cursed business of teaching, and that I can’t stand it any longer.  I want some kind of occupation that will allow me to have three good meals every day, and leave me my evenings free.  That isn’t asking much, I imagine; most men manage to find it.  I don’t care what the work is, not a bit.  If it’s of a kind which gives a prospect of getting on, all the better; if that’s out of the question, well, three good meals and a roof shall suffice.”

“You’re turning out a devilish sensible lad, Osmond,” said Mr. Woodstock, still smiling.  “Better late than never, as they say.  But I don’t see what you can do.  You literary chaps get into the way of thinking that any fool can make a man of business, and that it’s only a matter of condescending to turn your hands to desk work and the ways clear before you.  It’s a mistake, and you’re not the first that’ll find it out.”

“This much I know,” replied Waymark, with decision.  “Set me to anything that can be learnt, and I’ll be perfect in it in a quarter the time it would take the average man.”

“You want your evenings free?” asked the other, after a short reflection.  “What will you do with them?”

“I shall give them to literary work.”

“I thought as much.  And you think you can be a man of business and a poet at the same time?  No go, my boy.  If you take up business, you drop poetising.  Those two horses never yet pulled at the same shaft, and never will.”

Mr. Woodstock pondered for a few moments.  He thrust out his great legs with feet crossed on the fender, and with his hands jingled coin in his trouser-pockets.

“I tell you what,” he suddenly began.  “There’s only one thing I know of at present that you’re likely to be able to do.  Suppose I gave you the job of collecting my rents down east.”

“Weekly rents?”

“Weekly.  It’s a rough quarter, and they’re a shady lot of customers.  You wouldn’t find the job over-pleasant, but you might try, eh?”

“What would it bring me in,—­to go at once to the point?”

“The rents average twenty-five pounds.  Your commission would be seven per cent.  You might reckon, I dare say, on five-and-thirty shillings a week.”

“What is the day for collecting?”

“Mondays; but there’s lots of ’em you’d have to look up several times in a week.  If you like I’ll go round myself on Tuesday—­ Easter Monday’s no good—­and you can come with me.”