'Do you know,' he began, calling me by my name, 'I fancy you have been
criticising me--yes, I know you have. You think I made an ass of myself
about that affair in the wood. Well, I have no doubt I did. Now that it has
turned out pleasantly, I can see and admit that there was nothing to make a
fuss about.'
I smiled.
'Very well. Now, you're a writer. You like to get at the souls of men.
Suppose I show you a bit of mine.'
He had drunk freely of the potent ale, and was now sipping a strong tumbler
of hot whisky. Possibly this accounted in some measure for his
communicativeness.
'Up to the age of five-and-twenty I was clerk in a drug warehouse. To this
day even the faintest smell of drugs makes my heart sink. If I can help it,
I never go into a chemist's shop. I was getting a pound a week, and I not
only lived on it, but kept up a decent appearance. I always had a good suit
of clothes for Sundays and holidays--made at a tailor's in Holborn. Since
he disappeared I've never been able to find any one who fitted me so well.
I paid six-and-six a week for a top bedroom in a street near Gray's Inn
Road. Did you suppose I had gone through the mill?'
I made no answer, and, after looking at me for a moment, Ireton resumed:
'Those were damned days! It wasn't the want of good food and good lodgings
that troubled me most,--but the feeling that I was everybody's inferior.
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