"
"But we trust, Mr. Heldar, that you do not intend to sever your connection with
us?"
Dick's business in life was the study of faces, and he watched the speaker
keenly. "That man means something," he said. "I'll do no business till I"ve
seen Torpenhow. There's a big deal coming." So he departed, making no promises,
to his one little room by the Docks. And that day was the seventh of the month,
and that month, he reckoned with awful distinctness, had thirty-one days in it!
It is not easy for a man of catholic tastes and healthy appetites to exist for
twenty-four days on fifty shillings. Nor is it cheering to begin the experiment
alone in all the loneliness of London. Dick paid seven shillings a week for his
lodging, which left him rather less than a shilling a day for food and drink.
Naturally, his first purchase was of the materials of his craft; he had been
without them too long. Half a day's investigations and comparison brought him
to the conclusion that sausages and mashed potatoes, twopence a plate, were the
best food. Now, sausages once or twice a week for breakfast are not unpleasant.
As lunch, even, with mashed potatoes, they become monotonous. At dinner they
are impertinent. At the end of three days Dick loathed sausages, and, going,
forth, pawned his watch to revel on sheep"s head, which is not as cheap as it
looks, owing to the bones and the gravy.
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