Mr. Galloway gave his face another rub; the nightcap went higher and seemed to hang on only by its tassel, admitting the curls to full view. In spite of Roland's despairing state, he took advantage of the occasion. "I say, Mr. Galloway, your hair is not as luxuriant as it was." "It's like me, then," returned Mr. Galloway, whose mind was too much depressed to resent personal remarks. "What will become of us all without Arthur (putting out of sight for a moment the awful grief for himself) I cannot imagine. Look at his mother! He nearly supported the house: Mrs. Channing's own income is but a trifle, and Tom can't give much as yet. Look at me! What on earth I shall do without him at the office, never can be surmised!" "My goodness!" cried modest Roland. "You'll be almost as much put to it, sir, as you were when I went off to Port Natal." Mr. Galloway coughed. "Almost," assented he, rather satirically. "Why, Roland Yorke," he burst forth with impetuosity, "if you had been with me from then till now, and abandoned all your lazy tricks, and gone in for hard work, taking not a day's holiday or an hour's play, you could never have made yourself into half the capable and clever man that. Arthur was." "Well, you see, Mr. Galloway, my talents don't lie so much in the sticking to a desk as in knocking about," good-humouredly avowed Roland. "But I do go in for hard work; I do indeed." "I hear you didn't make a fortune at Port Natal, young man!" Roland, open as ever, gave a short summary of what he did instead--starved, and did work as a labourer, when he could get any to do and drove pigs, and came back home with his coat out at elbows. "Nobody need reproach me; it was worse for me than for them--not but what lots of people _do_. I tried my best; and I'm trying it still. It did me one service, Mr. Galloway--took my pride and my laziness out of me. But for the lessons of life I learnt at Port Natal, I should have continued a miserable humbug to the end, shirking work on my own score, and looking to other folks to keep me. I'm trying to do my best honestly, and to make my way. The returns are not grand yet, but such as they are I'm living on them, and they may get better. Rome was not built in a day. I went out to Port Natal to set good old Arthur right with the world; I couldn't bring myself to publish the confession, that you know of, sir, while I stopped here. I thought to make my fortune also, a few millions, or so. I didn't do it; it was a failure altogether, but it made a better man of me." "Glad to hear it," said Mr. Galloway. He watched the earnest eager face, bent towards him he noted the genuine, truthful, serious tone the words were spoken in and the conclusion he drew was that Roland might not be making an unjustifiable boast. It seemed incredible though, taking into recollection his former experience of that gentleman. "And when I've got on, so as to make a couple of hundred a year or so, I am going to get married, Mr. Galloway."