Strange knowledge comes to a man in this position. He learns wondrous
economies, and will feel a sort of pride in his ultimate discovery of how
little money is needed to support life. In his old days Mr. Tymperley would
have laid it down as an axiom that 'one' cannot live on less than
such-and-such an income; he found that 'a man' can live on a few coppers a
day. He became aware of the prices of things to eat, and was taught the
relative virtues of nutriment. Perforce a vegetarian, he found that a
vegetable diet was good for his health, and delivered to himself many a
scornful speech on the habits of the carnivorous multitude. He of necessity
abjured alcohols, and straightway longed to utter his testimony on a
teetotal platform. These were his satisfactions. They compensate
astonishingly for the loss of many kinds of self-esteem.
But it happened one day that, as he was in the act of drawing his poor
little quarterly salvage at the Bank of England, a lady saw him and knew
him. It was Mr. Charman's widow.
'Why, Mr. Tymperley, what _has_ become of you all this time? Why have I
never heard from you? Is it true, as some one told me, that you have been
living abroad?'
So utterly was he disconcerted, that in a mechanical way he echoed the
lady's last word: 'Abroad.
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