The following morning, James Lawrence Challoner did that which he had
never done since his marriage: he started out to look for a job.
Something, which he could not explain, was forcing him to try to get
work; but had he been given to self-analysis, he would have known that
it was Miriam's wrath in her adversity that had kindled into flame the
flickering, dying spark of his manhood.
Until now, Challoner had assumed that work was to be had by any man for
the mere asking of it; but he was surprised, startled, shocked, to find
that it was not; that is to say, the clerkships and such work as he
thought would be to his liking; and each night he returned to his
cheerless, lonely room in the tenement, sore, leg-weary, after a long
unsuccessful quest. Work? Little by little he was learning that there
was no work "lying round loose" for the James Lawrence Challoners of
this world! And yet he persevered.
"I must find something to do," he kept saying over and over again to
himself.
And then one day at the end of two weeks he found himself at the end of
a long line of Italian labourers who were seeking employment.