I assure you it is. The
circumstances forbid it. Clearly, what you have to do is to call together
your creditors, and arrive at an understanding. It is my principle never to
try to prop up a hopeless concern such as yours evidently is. Good day to
you, Mr. Humplebee; good day.'
A year later several things had happened. Mr. Humplebee was dead; his
penniless widow had gone to live in another town on the charity of poor
relatives, and Harry Humplebee sat in another office, drawing the salary at
which he had begun under Mr. Chadwick, his home a wretched bedroom in the
house of working-folk.
It did not appear to the lad that he had suffered any injustice. He knew
his own inaptitude for the higher kind of office work, and he had expected
his dismissal by Mr. Chadwick long before it came. What he did resent, and
profoundly, was Mr. Chadwick's refusal to aid his father in that last
death-grapple with ruinous circumstance. At the worst moment Harry wrote a
letter to Leonard Chadwick, whom he had never seen since he left school. He
told in simple terms the position of his family, and, without a word of
justifying reminiscence, asked his schoolfellow to help them if he could.
To this letter a reply came from London.
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