itywards that
Monday morning was not a very cheerful one. It seemed like walking out
of one life into another. Behind, like a dream, were the joyous, merry
days spent at Garden Vale and Wilderham, with no care for the future,
and no want for the present. Before them, still more like a dream, lay
the prospect of their new work, with all its anxiety, and drudgery, and
weariness, and the miserable eighteen shillings a week it promised them;
and, equally wretched at the present moment, there was the vision of
their desolate mother, alone in the Dull Street lodgings, where they had
just left her, unable at the last to hide the misery with which she saw
her two boys start out into the pitiless world.

The boys walked for some time in silence; then Horace said,--

"Old man, I hope, whatever they do, they'll let us be together at this
place."

"We needn't expect any such luck," said Reginald. "It wouldn't be half
so bad if they would."

"You know," said Horace, "I can't help hoping they'll take us as clerks,
at least. They must know we're educated, and more fit for that sort of
work than--"

"Than doing common labourer's work," said Reg. "Rather! If they'd put
us to some of the literary work, you know, Horace--editing, or
correcting, or reporting, or that sort of thing, I could stand that.
There are plenty of swells who began like that. I'm pretty well up in
classics, you know, and--well, they might be rather glad to have some
one who was."

Horace sighed.

"Richmond spoke as if we were to be taken on as ordinary workmen."

"Oh, Richmond's an ass," said Reg, full of his new idea; "he knows
nothing about it. I tell you, Horace, they wouldn't be such idiots as
to waste our education when they could make use of it. Richmond only
knows the manager, but the editor is the chief man, after all."

By this time they had reached Fleet Street, and their attention was
absorbed in finding the by-street in which was situated the scene of
their coming labours. They found it at last, and with beating hearts
saw before them a building surmounted by a board, bearing in characters
of gold the legend, _Rocket_ Newspaper Company, Limited.

The boys stood a moment outside, and the courage which had been slowly
rising during the walk evaporated in an instant. Ugly and grimy as the
building was, it seemed to them like some fairy castle before which they
shrank into insignificance. A board inscribed, "Work-people's
Entrance,"