"Then we must break up the home, I suppose?"
"I suppose so, Billy, much as I regret it. But a fellow has to take
advantage of the main chance in his life, you know, and this is mine?"
declared George Macbean, leaning back in his padded chair at the
breakfast-table in their high-up old room in Fig Tree Court, Temple.
"I should think so! An appointment in the Italian Ministry of War at
such a salary isn't an offer that comes to every man, and you'd be a
fool if you didn't accept it. You must have some high official friend
whom you've never told me about--eh?" And William Grenfell,
barrister-at-law, known as "Billy" to his intimates, with whom Macbean
shared chambers, took up his friend's letter and re-read it, asking,
"What's the signature? These foreigners sign their names in such an
abominable manner that nobody can ever read them."
"Angelo Borselli, the Under-Secretary. I met him in the summer, while I
was staying with my uncle near Rugby."
"And he offers you a billet like this? By Jove, you're lucky!" And the
big, burly, clean-shaven fellow of about thirty-five, one of the
ever-increasing briefless brigade, rose and looked out across the quiet
courtyard. "You'll throw over that pompous ass Morgan-Mason, won't you?
I wonder how you stood the cad so long."
"Necessity, my dear fellow. It has been writing letters for
Morgan-Mason or starve--I preferred the former," remarked Macbean, with
a smile.
The old panelled sitting-room, with its well-filled bookcase, its
pipe-rack, its threadbare carpet, and its greasy, leather-covered
chairs, worn but comfortable, differed but little from any other
chambers in that old-world colony of bachelors. Macbean and Grenfell
had had diggings together and employed the same laundress for the past
three years, the former spruce and smart, mixing with the West End world
in which his employer moved, while the latter was a thorough-going
Bohemian, eccentric in many ways, unsuccessful, yet nevertheless a man
brimming over with cleverness. They had been fast friends ten years
before, and when opportunity had offered to share chambers they had
eagerly embraced it.
Billy never had a brief. He idled in the Courts with a dummy brief
before him in order to impress the public, but his slender income was
mostly derived from contributions to certain critical reviews, who took
his "stuff" and paid him badly for it.
George Macbean, though he could so ill afford it, bore the major portion
of the expenses of their small household, for he knew well the little
reverses of fortune that had been Billy's, and what a good, generous
fellow he really was at heart.
Through those three years they had lived together no wry word had ever
arisen between them, but this letter which Macbean had received caused
them both to ponder.
Grenfell was a man of even temper and full of good-humour. He bubbled
over with high spirits, even in the face of actual adversity, while over
at the Courts he was recognised as a wit of no mean order. But thought
of the breaking up of their little home and their separation filled him
with deepest regret.