For he was
having a brilliant career, after all, in spite of the Whortley check,
licking up paper certificates indeed like a devouring flame.
(Surveying him, Madam, your eye would inevitably have fallen to his
collar--curiously shiny, a surface like wet gum. Although it has
practically nothing to do with this story, I must, I know, dispose of
that before I go on, or you will be inattentive. London has its
mysteries, but this strange gloss on his linen! "Cheap laundresses
always make your things blue," protests the lady. "It ought to have
been blue-stained, generously frayed, and loose about the button,
fretting his neck. But this gloss ..." You would have looked nearer,
and finally you would have touched--a charnel-house surface, dank and
cool! You see, Madam, the collar was a patent waterproof one. One of
those you wash over night with a tooth-brush, and hang on the back of
your chair to dry, and there you have it next morning rejuvenesced. It
was the only collar he had in the world, it saved threepence a week at
least, and that, to a South Kensington "science teacher in training,"
living on the guinea a week allowed by a parental but parsimonious
government, is a sum to consider. It had come to Lewisham as a great
discovery. He had seen it first in a shop window full of indiarubber
goods, and it lay at the bottom of a glass bowl In which goldfish
drifted discontentedly to and fro.
Pages:
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78