His Grace — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

16 HIS GRACE. cherish no grudge against him, I cannot recall the sharp speeches which he used to address to me in those days without feeling the blood mount into my cheeks and my eyes. I only remained on at the office day after day because it was necessary and because I could not, for the sake of asserting my personal dignity, throw the weight of supporting my great, useless body upon my poor old mother’s already overburdened hands. I suppose Uncle John knew that, and it may be that he allowed a more free rein to his tongue in consequence. Well, it is all over, and it doesn’t matter, and I admit that he is a very decent sort of man, as men go; only of course my forbearance was exercised to little pur- pose, for when once that kind of thing begins the sooner the inevitable end comes the better. In my case it came one afternoon when my uncle told me before all his clerks that I understood rather less of my business than the first crossing-sweeper whom he could pick up in the street. He had said worse things than that to me before; but he had not said them in so publica manner, and it seemed to me that, under the circumstances, the only possible course open to me was that which I made haste to adopt. Shortly afterwards I walked away from the City a free man and a practically penniless one. I was making for the club and was walking moodily along Piccadilly when a little man in beautifully-fitting black clothes—never in his life has Hurstbourne had a wrinkle about his person from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot—caught me by the arm, exclaim- ing, ‘ Here’s luck! You’re the very man I wanted to meet. Come and dine with me at the Clarence at eight o’clock, like a good fellow, will you? I’min a Gomichboo “S (E(0) m