"So it went on for the three years, my mother patiently waiting for me to get through my time and start in earnest as a professional man. My brother was at school, the one near Maldon, and was giving her a lot of trouble. I only saw him during the vacations. He was a big fellow, while as you see, I'm rather on the small side. I don't know that that should cause anybody any amusement! But because I was twenty and he was thirteen and nearly as tall as I was, he was for ever laughing. It seemed to him a huge joke. And as I thought about it the idea came to me that even nature was on his side and against me. It almost seemed as though she'd not only given him the brains, but the stature to be the great man my father and mother longed for. He was good-looking too, I remember, even then. My mother had to pack off a servant that vacation, a silly giggling little girl.
"I couldn't very well say anything to him, because I was getting into hot water myself for spending money. And when he wrote in mid-term for an extra sovereign, my mother blamed me for setting him a bad example. Lord! I didn't have a sovereign a year when I was thirteen. Times had changed.
"I had been drifting along for some time, expecting when my time was up to be put on the staff, as was usual with pupils. They usually gave us a job until we could use our influence to get an appointment somewhere. But in my case it didn't happen so. The day my three years' term was up, a beautiful spring day, the junior partner informed me that I could consider myself finished, and handed me a reference that, for all the use it was, might have gone into the waste-paper basket then and there.
"I was staggered. I had no idea of how to get a job. Why had I been pushed out? Simply because the firm had found out I had no influence with Sir Gregory Gotch, no standing socially at all. I was an alien in their ranks. I went out of that office with all the externals of a gentleman and a public-school boy, but inwardly an outsider as you may say. One thing I had though, and that was the firm conviction that 'pull' and not merit counted. I had to get some one to 'influence' a job in my favour. It would not have been gentlemanly to answer an advertisement!