"Ah me!" groaned Searle. "Have I come to Wadham gardens to hear the praise of America?"
"Wadham gardens are very well!" said Mr. Rawson; "but one may sit here hungry and shabby, so long as one is n't too shabby, as well as elsewhere. You 'll not persuade me that it's not an easier thing to keep afloat yonder than here. I wish I were there, that's all!" added Mr. Rawson, with a sort of feeble minded energy. Then brooding for a moment on his wrongs: "Have you a brother? or you, sir? It matters little to you. But it has mattered to me with a vengeance! Shabby as I sit here, I have a brother with his five thousand a year. Being a couple of years my senior, he gorges while I starve. There's England for you! A very pretty place for him!"
"Poor England!" said Searle, softly.
"Has your brother never helped you?" I asked.
"A twenty-pound note now and then! I don't say that there have not been times when I have sorely tried his generosity. I have not been what I should. I married dreadfully amiss. But the devil of it is that he started fair and I started foul; with the tastes, the desires, the needs, the sensibilities of a gentleman,—and nothing else! I can't afford to live in England."
"This poor gentleman," said I, "fancied a couple of months ago that he could n't afford to live in America."
