Ernest laughed till he cried. "What rot Shakespeare is
after this," he exclaimed, involuntarily. I remembered his essay on
the Greek tragedians, and was more epris with than ever.
Next day he set about looking for employment, and I did not see
him til about five o'clock, when he came and said that he had had no
success. The same thing happened the next day and the day after
that. Wherever he went he was invariably refused and often ordered
point blank out of the shop; I could see by the expression of his
face, though he said nothing, that he was getting frightened, and
began to think I should have to come to the rescue. He said he had
made a great many enquiries and had always been told the same story.
He found that it was easy to keep on in an old line, but very hard
to strike out into a new one.
He talked to the fishmonger in Leather Lane, where he went to buy
a bloater for his tea, casually as though from curiosity and without
any interested motive. "Sell," said the master of the shop, "why,
nobody wouldn't believe what can be sold by penn'orths and
twopenn'orths if you go the right way to work. Look at whelks, for
instance. Last Saturday night me and my little Emma here, we sold L7
worth of whelks between eight and half past eleven o'clock -and almost
all in penn'orths and twopenn'orths -a few hap'orths, but not many.
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