dn't want
much and I wasn't reckless: upon my word, it's hard. Well, it can't be
helped. Look here: do you know a lawyer who would suit me?"

"Is that the way you mean to apply for a situation? Let us see: will
Your Highness stay in town?"

"And meet all sorts of people? My Highness will not."

"In the country, then?"

"No, a big town--the bigger the better--some great manufacturing place,
where every one has smuts on his face, money in his pocket, and is too
busy improving machinery to have time to look at his neighbor."

"Would Brenthill do?"

"Admirably."

"I know a man there: I dare say he would as soon oblige me as not. What
shall I say?"

"Say that I want employment as a clerk, and that, though I am utterly
inexperienced, I write a good hand and am fairly intelligent. Don't say
that I am active and obliging, for I'm neither. Tell him that if he can
give me a fair trial it is all that you ask, and that he may turn me out
at the end of a week if I don't do."

Godfrey nodded assent.

"I think you may as well write it _now_," said Percival. "I shall find
it difficult to live for any length of time on this private fortune of
mine without making inroads on my capital."

Hammond stretched himself and crossed the room to his writing-table.
"Are you sure you won't change your mind?" he said. "It will be a
horrible existence. Clerks receive very poor pay: I don't believe you
can live on it."

"At any rate, I can die rather more slowly on it, and that will be
convenient just now."

"Why don't you wait, and see if we can't help you to something better?"

Percival shook his head: "No. I promised Sissy that if I took help from
any one, it should be from her. I must try to stand by myself first."

Godfrey wrote, and Percival sat with bent head, poring over the little
note which Sissy had sent to entreat that the past might be forgotten.
"Let me do something for you," she wrote. "Come back to me, Percival, if
you have forgiven me; and you said you had. I was so miserable that
miserable night, and we were so hurried, I hardly know what I said or
did. It was like a bad dream: let us forget it, and wake up and begin
again. Can't we? Come and be good to me, as you were last autumn. You
remember your song that day in the garden, 'You would die ere I should
grieve;' and I have grieved so bitterly since last Wednesday night! You
will be good to me--won't you?--and I promise I will tell you everything
always. I promis