But the first letter was yours, and I
thought the fair thing to do was at all events to see you, you
know. The fact is, I am only able to offer a pound a week.'
'I shall be very glad indeed to take that,' said Reardon, who was
bathed in perspiration.
'Then what about references, and so on?' proceeded the young man,
chuckling and rubbing his hands together.
The applicant was engaged. He had barely strength to walk home;
the sudden relief from his miseries made him, for the first time,
sensible of the extreme physical weakness into which he had sunk.
For the next week he was very ill, but he did not allow this to
interfere with his new work, which was easily learnt and not
burdensome.
He held this position for three years, and during that time
important things happened. When he had recovered from his state
of semi-starvation, and was living in comfort (a pound a week is
a very large sum if you have previously had to live on ten
shillings), Reardon found that the impulse to literary production
awoke in him more strongly than ever. He generally got home from
the hospital about six o'clock, and the evening was his own.
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