Thanks clearly meant refusal with Ted, and I confess he rose higher in my esteem somehow, for the fact that he could actually refuse what to me seemed like wealth. I recalled the fact that my father had paid Ted exactly half this amount, and had found him quite willing to stay with us for half that again, or even for occasional tobacco money. Perhaps there was a mercenary vein in me at the time. I think it likely. The talk of my fellow orphans was largely of wages, and materialism dominated the atmosphere in which I lived. I know this refusal of twenty-five shillings a week and 'all found' struck me as tolerably reckless; splendid, in a way, but somewhat foolhardy, and I hinted as much to Ted. 'Och, bother him an' his twenty-five shillin'!' said Ted. 'Just because I cleared his old paddick, he thinks I'm a workin' bullick. He offered me thirty shillin' after, if ye come to that; an' I told him he hadn't money enough in the bank to keep me. Neither has he.' 'But, Ted,' I urged, 'why not? It's good money, and you've got to work somewhere.' 'Aye,' said Ted, his constraint lifting for a moment to admit the right vagabondish twinkle into his blue eyes. 'Somewhere! An' sometimes. But not there, mate, an' not all the time, thank ye; not me. It's all right for Mannasseh Ford; but, spare me days, I'd sooner be in me grave.' I pondered this for a time, while a voice within me kept on repeating with sickening certainty: 'He's going away; he's going away. You've lost your friend; you've lost your friend.' And then, as one thrusts a foot into cold water before taking a plunge: 'Well, then, what shall you do, Ted?' I asked him. But, for the moment, I was not to have the plunge. 'Oh, if ye come to that,' he said, weakly smiling, 'I've money in hand, an' to spare. Look at the wealth o' me.' And he drew out for my edification a little bundle of greasy one-pound notes, which, for me, certainly had a very substantial look. I knew instinctively that my friend wanted me to help him out by pursuing the inquiry; but for the time I shirked it, and we talked of other things. Later in the day I returned to it, as a moth to a candle, undeterred, partly impelled thereto, in fact, by the assured foreknowledge that the process would hurt. 'But what will you do, Ted, now you've given up Mannasseh Ford? Will you take another job round the Creek here, or----' I paused, scanning my only friend's face, and seeing my loss of him writ plainly in his downcast eyes and half-shamed expression. (I am not sure but what there may have been more of the human boy, the child, in Ted, than in myself.)