A Search For A Secret, a Novel, Vol. 2 by G. A. Henty

Author:G. A. Henty
Language: eng
Format: epub

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CHAPTER VIII.

STRUGGLES FOR A LIVING.

When at Christmas time Robert Gregory heard that one of the springs which were supposed to open the secret door was found, he gave up for a time even the pretence of looking for anything to do; but not very long afterwards he met an old friend, and most unexpectedly went into a business with him, and that perhaps the only one which could have been named for which he was really fitted.

He had one day, as was his usual custom, entered a public-house where he was well known, and had gone into the bar parlour, where he was sitting reading the paper, smoking his pipe, and drinking a glass of spirits and water, when another man entered the room, looked carelessly at Gregory, then more attentively, and finally burst out,--

"Hallo, Robert? is that you? How fares the world with you all this time?"

"By Jove, Fielding! is that you? How are you, my boy?"

They greeted each other warmly, for they had been a great deal together in the time when Gregory was in London, and their satisfaction at meeting was mutual. After a while, they sat down before the fire, ordered fresh glasses of spirits and water, and prepared for a long talk over all that had happened since they had parted some four years ago--Robert to return to his father at Canterbury, Fielding to continue for a short time longer the reckless life they were living about town.

"Now, Gregory," Fielding said, "let me hear what you have been doing first."

Robert, in reply, related pretty accurately the whole of his life since he had left London.

"Well, that is a rum start," his companion said when he had finished his story. "And you really think that you will some day come in for all this money?"

"I do," Robert answered. "As I have told you they are trying down there now, and have a good chance; but if that fails, I mean to try for it myself. And now what have you been doing?"

"The easiest way to answer would be to tell you what I have not been doing. You left us in the winter, and I held on, as I had been doing before, till the next Derby Day; but I dropped so much upon that, that I had to make myself scarce for a bit. Then I came back again, and set to work to earn my living, and very hard work I found it."

"I should think so," Robert Gregory put in. "I have been trying to get something to do for the last three months, and I am no nearer, as far as I can see, than when I began. How did you set about it?"

"To tell you the truth, Robert, I found it rather up-hill work at first. I worked for the papers for a bit,--went to all the fires, and the inquests, and the hospitals, and sent accounts to all the dailies. Of course at first they did not often put them in, still they did sometimes, and after a month or two they came to take them pretty regularly.

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