He is sorry. That, both now and for the years that are to come, is his chief thought--his daily, desperate anxiety: sorry to think how he has let his selfish ideas of better work, his thoughts of marrying Brida, blind him to his duty to devoted Alice and to old Bill's kids. Think of her life here! Think of those poor little beggars growing up and the education they ought to have, the careers old Bill would have wished them to enter! He is so sorry that only for one sharp moment does he cry out in utter dread at the proposal which now Mrs. Filmer, a little mollified, fixes upon him. "In any case," says Mrs. Filmer, "whatever you manage to do or decide to do, you'd better come and live here. You can live far more cheaply here than letting a London landlady have part of your income." Only for one sharp moment he protests. "I couldn't!" Young Wriford cries. "I couldn't work here. I simply couldn't." "You can have a nice table put in your bedroom," says Mrs. Filmer. "If you're really sorry, if you really intend to do your duty by your brother's children--" "All right," says Young Wriford. "It's very kind of you. All right." VIII He does not return to Gamber's. He is one of the lucky ones. The great daily newspaper, the _Intelligence_, has a particular fame for its column of leaderettes and latterly is forever throwing out those who write them in search of one who shall restore them to their old reputation (recently a little clouded). Young Wriford puts in for the post and gets it and holds it and soon couples with it much work on the literary side of the paper. There is a change in the proprietorship of the penny evening paper, the _Piccadilly Gazette_, bringing in one who turns the paper upside down to fill it with new features. Young Wriford puts in specimens of a column of facetious humour--"Hit or Miss"--and it is established forthwith, and every morning he is early at the _Piccadilly Gazette_ office to produce it. Thus within a very few weeks of leaving Gamber's and of coming to live at Surbiton, he is earning more than twice as much as he had relinquished--proving himself most manifestly one of the lucky ones, and earning the money and the reputation at cost to himself of which only himself is aware.