had a bad quarter of an hour after she had gone. The sacred precincts of Hortons contained at least one honest soul that afternoon. He saw himself exactly as he was—spoilt, useless, idle, and conceited. He swore to himself that he would find work of some kind before the day was done.
He went out. It was a lovely afternoon early in May. Mr. Bottome, the newsagent, had fine copies of Colour showing in his window, the top of Duke Street gazed straight into the huge naked-looking statue of a horse in the courtyard of the Academy. Everything seemed to be having a spring cleaning.
He turned back and down into Jermyn Street. Next to the Hamman Baths they were painting a house light green. A nice young fellow in overalls stepped off a ladder as Clive passed.
He smiled at Clive. Clive smiled back.
"Is that an easy job?" Clive asked him.
"Oh yes, sir," the young fellow answered.
"Could you manage it with one arm?" Clive asked.
"Why, yes," the man said.
"Could I pick it up quickly?"
"Lord, yes!"
"Will you teach me?"
A week later Mr. Nix, in a hurry as usual, was pattering up Duke Street. Bottome's paper shop was having a new coat of paint. A young workman in yellow overalls perched on a ladder managed his brush adroitly with one arm.
"Poor fellow!" said Mr. Nix, a compassionate man always, but doubly so now because he had lost his son in the war. "Left the other in France, I suppose."
The workman looked down, and revealed to the astonished countenance of Mr. Nix the laughing eyes of his late tenant, the Hon. Clive Torby.
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