“I’ve been doing the best I can, of course.” He made this statement without sarcasm, in a voice that seemed to say: “This world I live in is, of course, a funny world; the sort of fun it likes may be first-rate, but if I were once to begin to laugh at it, where could I stop--I ask you--where?” “Plenty of milk they tell me is the best thing I can take, but the child she’s bound to have as much as we can manage to buy. At her age, you see, she needs it. Of course, if I could get a job!--I’d take anything--I’d drive a baker’s cart!” He lifted his little pipes of arms, and let them fall again, and God knows what he meant by such a motion, unless it were to show his strength. “Of course, some days,” he said, “I can hardly get my breath at all, and that’s against me.” It would be, as he said, against him; and, encouraged by a look, he added: “I know I kep’ on too long with my profession; but you know what it is--when you’ve been brought up to a job you get to depend on it; to give it up is like chuckin’ of yourself away. And that’s what I’ve found--people don’t want such as I am now.” And for a full half-minute we stood looking at each other; his bitten, discoloured lips twitched twice, and a faint pink warmed the paper whiteness of his cheeks. “Up at the hospital they don’t seem to take no interest in my case any more; seems as if they thought it ’opeless.” Unconscious that he had gone beneath the depths of human nature, shown up the human passion for definite success, illustrated human worship of the idol strength, and human scorn for what is weak--he said these simple words in an almost injured tone. Recovery might be impossible, people did not want such as he was now; but he was still interested in himself, still loth to find himself a useless bee ejected from the hive. His lashless eyes seemed saying: “I believe I could get well--I do believe I could!” Yet he was not unreasonable, for he went on: “When I first went there they took a lot of interest in me--but that’s a year ago. Perhaps I’ve disappointed them!” Perhaps he had! “They kept on telling me to take plenty of fresh air. Where I live, of course, there’s not so very much about, but I take all I can. Not bein’ able to get a job, I’ve been sitting in the Park. I take the child--they tell me not to have her too near me in the house.” And I had a vision of this man of leisure sitting in the Park, rubbing his hand stealthily to keep them dry, and watching with red eyes the other men of leisure; too preoccupied to wonder even why his leisure was not like theirs. “Days like this,” he said, “it’s warm enough; but I can’t enjoy them for thinking of what’s coming.” His glance wandered to the pear-trees in the garden--they were all in blossom, and lighted by the sun; he looked down again a little hastily. A blackbird sang beyond the further wall. The little baker passed his tongue over his lips.