no means
follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very
strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares. The unhappy
state of his own affairs was the one idea which occupied the brain of
Nicholas, walk as fast as he would; and when he tried to dislodge it by
speculating on the situation and prospects of the people who surrounded
him, he caught himself, in a few seconds, contrasting their condition
with his own, and gliding almost imperceptibly back into his old train
of thought again.

Occupied in these reflections, as he was making his way along one of the
great public thoroughfares of London, he chanced to raise his eyes to
a blue board, whereon was inscribed, in characters of gold, 'General
Agency Office; for places and situations of all kinds inquire within.'
It was a shop-front, fitted up with a gauze blind and an inner door;
and in the window hung a long and tempting array of written placards,
announcing vacant places of every grade, from a secretary's to a
foot-boy's.

Nicholas halted, instinctively, before this temple of promise, and ran
his eye over the capital-text openings in life which were so profusely
displayed. When he had completed his survey he walked on a little way,
and then back, and then on again; at length, after pausing irresolutely
several times before the door of the General Agency Office, he made up
his mind, and stepped in.

He found himself in a little floor-clothed room, with a high desk railed
off in one corner, behind which sat a lean youth with cunning eyes and a
protruding chin, whose performances in capital-text darkened the window.
He had a thick ledger lying open before him, and with the fingers of his
right hand inserted between the leaves, and his eyes fixed on a very
fat old lady in a mob-cap--evidently the proprietress of the
establishment--who was airing herself at the fire, seemed to be only
waiting her directions to refer to some entries contained within its
rusty clasps.

As there was a board outside, which acquainted the public that
servants-of-all-work were perpetually in waiting to be hired from ten
till four, Nicholas knew at once that some half-dozen strong young
women, each with pattens and an umbrella, who were sitting upon a form
in one corner, were in attendance for that purpose: especially as the
poor things looked anxious and weary. He was not quite so certain of the
callings and stations of two smart young ladies who were in c