hard--we've tried everything." The gulp was communicative; it proved
too much for his wife. Before I knew it Mrs. Monarch had dropped
again upon a divan and burst into tears. Her husband sat down beside
her, holding one of her hands; whereupon she quickly dried her eyes
with the other, while I felt embarrassed as she looked up at me.
"There isn't a confounded job I haven't applied for--waited for--
prayed for. You can fancy we'd be pretty bad first. Secretaryships
and that sort of thing? You might as well ask for a peerage. I'd be
ANYTHING--I'm strong; a messenger or a coalheaver. I'd put on a
gold-laced cap and open carriage-doors in front of the haberdasher's;
I'd hang about a station, to carry portmanteaus; I'd be a postman.
But they won't LOOK at you; there are thousands, as good as yourself,
already on the ground. GENTLEMEN, poor beggars, who have drunk their
wine, who have kept their hunters!"

I was as reassuring as I knew how to be, and my visitors were
presently on their feet again while, for the experiment, we agreed on
an hour. We were discussing it when the door opened and Miss Churm
came in with a wet umbrella. Miss Churm had to take the omnibus to
Maida Vale and then walk half-a-mile. She looked a trifle blowsy and
slightly splashed. I scarcely ever saw her come in without thinking
afresh how odd it was that, being so little in herself, she should
yet be so much in others. She was a meagre little Miss Churm, but
she was an ample heroine of romance. She was only a freckled
cockney, but she could represent everything, from a fine lady to a
shepherdess; she had the faculty, as she might have had a fine voice
or long hair.

She couldn't spell, and she loved beer, but she had two or three
"points," and practice, and a knack, and mother-wit, and a kind of