Things went on well enough with the Chaytors for a few months. We did not see much of Nat; Minnie had a freezing, fine-lady manner with old bachelor friends, and liked her husband to go to bed when she did--punctually at eleven. Things went on well enough until he got discharged from his berth in the City. It was the usual story--business bad, reducing the staff, and so on. But I rather fancy that Nat’s easy hours had something to do with it. He always turned up half an hour late in the morning, took two hours for his lunch, another hour for afternoon tea, and went off at six every night, very often leaving the members of the firm at their desks. He had that fierce, sick hatred of City life which so many fellows have--nearly all the fellows who are good for anything. The dozens that I have seen chuck the accursed City! Some of these go up and some go under. But whichever way it is, they live--or die--free men. He lost his berth. He was rather relieved than otherwise. He had been expecting it for a long time. A City clerk’s is a grim calling. He is never safe, and he knows that once out of a situation the chances are ten to one against his getting another. It is like losing your footing in a crowd--there is small chance of getting up again. Orion knew that; it egged him on to murder the old woman in Great Ormond Street. No doubt Nat had a hot time with Minnie when he told her the news. She was one of those small, sharp-featured, rasping-voiced girls, with an ineffaceable sneer on her lips. Her creed was getting on in the world. She had been hoping that Nat would have a rise--two hundred a year, so that they might have a house all to themselves in the suburbs, and a little maidservant with a cap and apron. She said that the Inn wasn’t a fit place for a respectable young woman, and very likely she was right. But Chaytor, as usual, put a good face on the affair. I think he was genuinely glad. The City fogs hurt his chest, he said; and was a man a slave or a schoolboy, that he should mount the same confounded office stool every morning, year in and year out! “They only give us a fortnight’s holiday,” he added, “and then it is always wet. Find me the City clerk who has ever had a fine fortnight for his annual holiday!” Minnie cried out savagely, “Stuff and nonsense!” She asked him where he expected to find thirty-five pounds a year rent and a pound a week housekeeping, to say nothing of extras such as clothes. “Easily enough,” Chaytor cried airily. “I’m going in for journalism.” And then it began--the long, heart-breaking struggle--with a shrew at his elbow thrown in. He used to sit at the window and wait for the last post every evening. He watched the postman cross the square and fumble at his bag. “That article is sure to be accepted,” he would call into the room to Minnie. “Here is the check coming upstairs. We’ll go down to your home for a little holiday.”