em. They are quite satisfied. Playing golf, and thinking
of clever things to say to women like my stepmother, and dining out.
You're in front of them already in one thing. They think they know
everything. You don't. And they know such little things."

"Lord!" said Mr. Hoopdriver. "How you encourage a fellow!"

"If I could only help you," she said, and left an eloquent hiatus. He
became pensive again.

"It's pretty evident you don't think much of a draper," he said
abruptly.

Another interval. "Hundreds of men," she said, "have come from the very
lowest ranks of life. There was Burns, a ploughman; and Hugh Miller, a
stonemason; and plenty of others. Dodsley was a footman--"

"But drapers! We're too sort of shabby genteel to rise. Our coats and
cuffs might get crumpled--"

"Wasn't there a Clarke who wrote theology? He was a draper."

"There was one started a sewing cotton, the only one I ever heard tell
of."

"Have you ever read 'Hearts Insurgent'?"

"Never," said Mr. Hoopdriver. He did not wait for her context, but
suddenly broke out with an account of his literary requirements. "The
fact is--I've read precious little. One don't get much of a chance,
situated as I am. We have a library at business, and I've gone through
that. Most Besant I've read, and a lot of Mrs. Braddon's and Rider
Haggard and Marie Corelli--and, well--a Ouida or so. They're good
stories, of course, and first-class writers, but they didn't seem to
have much to do with me. But there's heaps of books one hears talked
about, I HAVEN'T read."

"Don't you read any other books but novels?"

"Scarcely ever. One gets tired after business, and you can't get the
books. I have been to some extension lectures, of course, 'Lizabethan
Dramatists,' it was, but it seemed a little high-flown, you know. And I
went and did wood-carving at the same place. But it didn't seem leading
nowhere, and I cut my thumb and chucked it."

He made a depressing spectacle, with his face anxious and his hands
limp. "It makes me sick," he said, "to think how I've been fooled with.
My old schoolmaster ought to have a juiced HIDING. He's a thief. He
pretended to undertake to make a man of me, and be's stole twenty-three
years of my life, filled me up with scraps and sweepings. Here I am! I
don't KNOW anything, and I can't DO anything, and all the learning time
is over."

"Is it?" she said; but he did not seem to hear her. "My o' people didn't
know any better, and went and