“We all know that. You sit on a stool, and look nice, and wait for a brief to come along and beg to be taken up.” “It’s a chair. I’m not one of the clerks. And I shouldn’t get a brief any quicker if I went and shouted on the housetops that I wanted one.” “Besides, you don’t want one. You know you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it. Well, how’s East London?…” and Hall crossed to the slum-worker, with a show of interest she evidently did not feel for the embryo barrister. Lorraine smiled at him, however, and he moved leisurely forward to take the vacant seat beside her on the sofa. “Is Hal trying to sharpen her wit at your expense?” she asked him, in a friendly, natural way. “Yes; but it’s a very blunt weapon at the best. People who always think they are the only ones to work are very tiring; don’t you think so?” “Decidedly; and I don’t suppose she does half s much as you and I in reality.” “Oh well, I could hardly belie myself so far as to assert that. You see, it takes a long time to make people understand what a good barrister you would be if you got the chance to prove it.” Hal could not resist a timely shot. “Personally, I shoud advise you to try and prove it without the chance. The chance might undo the proving, you see.” “What a rotten, mixed-up, meaningless remark!” he retorted. “Is it because you find I am so dull, you still have to talk to me?” “Quin is never dull, he is only depressing. Dick, do hurry up and begin supper. I always feel horribly hungry here, because I know Quin has just come away from some starving family or other, and I have to try and eat to forget.” Lorraine leant across to the dreamy-eyed first-class circketer, voluntarily giving his life to the slums. “Why do you do it?” she asked with sudden interest. “It seems, somehow, unnatural in a—” she hesitated, then finished a little lamely, “a man like you.” “Oh no, not at all,” he hastened to assure her. “It’s the most fascinating work in the world. It’s full of novelty and surprises for one thing.” She shuddered a little. “But the misery and want and starvation. The … the… utter hopelessness of it all.” “But it isn’t hopeless at all. Nothing is hopeless. And then, knowing the misery is there, and doing nothing, is far worse than seeing it and doing what one can.” “Oh no, because one can forget so often.” “Some can. I can’t. Therefore I can only choose to go and wrestle with it.” “Of course it is heroic of you, but still!—” Harold St. Quintin gave a gay laugh. “It is not a bit more heroic than your work on the stage to give people pleasure. I get as much satisfaction in return as you do; and that is the main point. Slum humanity is seething with interest, and it is by no means all sad, nor all discouraging. There is probably more humour and heroism there per square mile than anywhere else.” “And no doubt more animal life also,” put in Dick Bruce. “It’s the superfluous things that put me off, not the want of anything.”