little house of course. It's a bit like
Adam and Eve, you know. Lord! what a chap old Milton was!

"'The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.'

"It sounds, George.... Providence their guide!... Well--thank goodness
there's no imeedgit prospect of either Cain or Abel!"

"After all, it won't be so bad up there. Not the scenery, perhaps, or
the air we get here, but--LIFE! We've got very comfortable little rooms,
very comfortable considering, and I shall rise. We're not done yet,
we're not beaten; don't think that, George. I shall pay twenty shillings
in the pound before I've done--you mark my words, George,--twenty--five
to you.... I got this situation within twenty-four hours--others
offered. It's an important firm--one of the best in London. I looked to
that. I might have got four or five shillings a week more--elsewhere.
Quarters I could name. But I said to them plainly, wages to go on with,
but opportunity's my game--development. We understood each other."

He threw out his chest, and the little round eyes behind his glasses
rested valiantly on imaginary employers.

We would go on in silence for a space while he revised and restated that
encounter. Then he would break out abruptly with some banal phrase.

"The Battle of Life, George, my boy," he would cry, or "Ups and Downs!"

He ignored or waived the poor little attempts I made to ascertain my own
position. "That's all right," he would say; or, "Leave all that to me.
I'LL look after them." And he would drift away towards the philosophy
and moral of the situation. What was I to do?

"Never put all your resources into one chance, George; that's the lesson
I draw from this. Have forces in reserve. It was a hundred to one,
George, that I was right--a hundred to one. I worked it out afterwards.
And here we are spiked on the off-chance. If I'd have only kept back a
little, I'd have had it on U.P. next day, like a shot, and come out on
the rise. There you are!"

His thoughts took a graver turn.

"It's where you'll bump up against Chance like this, George, that you
feel the need of religion. Your hard-and-fast scientific men--your
Spencers and Huxleys--they don't understand that. I do. I've thought
of it a lot lately--in bed and about. I was thinking of it this morning
while I shaved. It's not irreverent for me to say it, I hope--but God
comes in on the off-chance, George. See? Don't you be too cocksur