The first thing he did was to divide the ninepence with one who was poorer than he; the second was to get a cup of coffee and a slice of bread at a street coffee-stall; the third was to hasten to Lord Carrick's tailor--and a tremendous walk it was, but that was nothing to Roland--and get rigged out in any second-hand suit of clothes returned on hand that might be decent. There ill news awaited him; it was the time of year when Lord Carrick might, as a rule, be found in London; but he had not come; he was, the tailor believed, in Ireland. Roland at once knew, as sure as though it had been told him, that his uncle was in some kind of pecuniary hot water. Borrowing the very smallest amount of money that would take him to Ireland, he went off down the Thames in a return cattleboat that very day. Since that period, hard upon three years, he had been almost equally "knocking about," and experienced nearly as many ups and downs in Ireland as at Port Natal. Sometimes living in clover with Lord Carrick, at others thrown on his own resources and getting on somehow. Lord Carrick's will was good to help him, but not always his ability; now and again it had happened that his lordship (who was really more improvident than his nephew, and had to take flights to the Continent on abrupt emergencies and without a day's warning) was lost to society for a time, even to Roland. Roland hired himself out as a kind of overlooker to some absentee's estate, but he could not get paid for it. This part of his career need not be traced; on the whole, he did still strive to do something for himself as strenuously as he had at Port Natal, and not to be a burthen to anybody, even to Lord Carrick. To this end he came over to London, and presented himself one day to his late father's brother, Sir Richard Yorke, and boldly asked him if he could not "put him into something." The request caused Sir Richard (an old gentleman with a fat face) to stare immensely; he was very poor and very selfish, and had persistently held himself aloof from his late brother's needy family, keeping them always at arm's length. His son and heir had been content to do the same: in truth, the cousins did not know each other by sight. Sir Richard's estate was worth four thousand a-year, all told; and as he was wont to live at the rate of six, it will be understood that he was never in funds. Neither had he patronage or influence in anyway. To be thus summarily applied to by a stalwart young man, who announced himself as his nephew, took the baronet aback; and if he did not exactly turn Roland out of the house, his behaviour was equivalent to it "I'll be shot if I ever go near him again," cried Roland. "I'd rather cry hot pies in Poplar streets."