It
was the steam that did it. We kept aboiling of 'em hot and hot, and
whenever the steam came strong up from the cellar onto the pavement,
the people bought, but whenever the steam went down they left off
buying; so we boiled them over and over again till they was all
sold. That's just where it is; if you know your business you can sell,
if you don't you'll soon make a mess of it. Why, but for the steam,
I should not have sold 10s. worth of whelks all the night through."
This and many another yarn of kindred substance which he heard from
other people determined Ernest more than ever to stake on tailoring as
the one trade about which he knew anything at all, nevertheless,
here were three or four days gone by and employment seemed as far
off as ever.
I now did what I ought to have done before, that is to say, I called
on my own tailor whom I had dealt with for over a quarter of a century
and asked his advice. He declared Ernest's plan to be hopeless.
"If," said Mr. Larkins, for this was my tailor's name, "he had begun
at fourteen, it might have done, but no man of twenty-four could stand
being turned to work into a workshop full of tailors; he would not get
on with the men, nor the men with him; you could not expect him to
be 'hail fellow, well met' with them, and you could not expect his
fellow-workmen to like him if he was not.
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