quietly.

"Well, I took you at your word. And I think I've landed you one.
Radbourne & Company want a good man to do mechanical drawing. They'll
pay a hundred and fifty to the right man at the start, and they'll
raise that later if you turn out well. Do you care to try it on?"

"Yes," David said again.

"I still think you're making a mistake--but that's your business.
Shall we go around to Radbourne's now?"

"Yes."

To those three monosyllables David added nothing during the few
minutes' walk. Had Jim been leading him to the prisoner's dock David
could not have taken less joy in the journey. Jim discoursed of the
judge before whom the prisoner was being led.

"Odd fish, this Radbourne. Dinky little man. With whiskers. You're
apt to think he's a fool at first. But that's a mistake. He isn't at
all--I'd hate to lose his account. He makes machines in a small way,
but very well _and_ quite profitably. His father made a reputation for
turning out high-class work and the son keeps it up. We got to know
him at St. Mark's. Mrs. Jim says he's the only man of real charity she
knows--not even excepting me."

David forgot to smile.

They were shown into a small bare office, where, behind a littered
flat-top desk, the judge got nimbly to his feet; although "judge" was
in this case a queer fancy indeed, as David had later to confess.

There are several ways in which men can be homely, and Radbourne, of
Radbourne & Company, had chosen the worst way of all. When you saw him
you wanted to smile. He was little and roly-poly. His eyes were too
small, their blue too light. His nose was acutely and ungracefully
pug. His ears were too big and stood out from his head. His mouth was
too wide. His hair and eyebrows were thick and red, too red, and his
round chubby face was flanked by a pair of silky, luxuriant red
Dundrearies that would have done credit to a day of hirsute
achievements. His linen was strictly without blemish, and he wore a
creaseless black frock coat and a waistcoat of brown broadcloth. And
as he stood looking up at his tall visitors, head on one side, he
reminded them of nothing so much as a sleek cock-robin who had just
dined to his taste. He seemed to be in his late thirties.

David would have smiled at any other time. "Why, this," he thought
unkindly, "is a mere comic valentine."

The comic valentine smiled, a little shyly it seemed, and put out a
slender long-fingered hand.

"This,"