the small hours out of sheer disgust with the dead hopelessness of life.
That's what it is coming to as things now are."

"All very well. But, in that case, what is to become of me--of us?"

A very hard look came into the man's face at the question.

"In that case--draw on the other side of the house. There's plenty
there," he answered shortly, re-lighting his pipe, which had gone out in
mid-blast.

The reply seemed to fan up her wrath anew, and she started in to talk at
him again. Under which circumstances, perhaps it was just as well that a
couple of heavy bangs overhead and a series of appalling yells,
betokening a nursery catastrophe, should cut short her eloquence, and
start her off, panic-stricken, to investigate.

Left alone, still standing with his back to the mantelpiece, Laurence
Stanninghame put forth a hand. It shook--was, in fact, all of a tremble.

"Look at that!" he said to himself. "The squalid racket of this
rough-and-tumble life is playing the devil with my nerves. I believe I
couldn't drink a wineglassful of grog at this moment without spilling
half of it on the floor. I'll try, anyhow."

He unlocked a chiffonier, produced a whisky bottle, and, having poured
some into a wineglass, not filling it, tossed off the "nip."

"That's better," he said. Then mechanically he moved to the window and
stood looking out, though in reality seeing nothing. He was
thinking--thinking hard. The course he had decided to adopt was the
right thing--as to that he had no sort of doubt. He had no regular
income, and such remnant of capital as he still possessed was dwindling
alarmingly. Men had made fortunes at places like Johannesburg, starting
with almost literally the traditional half-crown, why should not he? Not
that he expected to make a fortune; a fair competence would satisfy him,
a sufficiency. The thought of no longer being obliged to hold an inquest
on every sixpence; of bidding farewell forever to this life of pinching
and screwing; of dwelling decently instead of pigging it in a cramped
and jerry-built semi-detached; of enjoying once more some of life's
brightnesses--sport, for instance, of which he was passionately fond; of
the means to wander, when disposed, through earth's fairest
places--these reflections would have fired his soul as he stood there,
but that the flame of hopefulness had long since died within him and
gone out. Now they only evoked bitterness by their tantalizing
allurement.

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