That exhausted, he must begin to sell his clothes.

And then--?
But help was at hand.

One day he saw it advertised in a newspaper that the secretary of a hospital in the north of London was in need of a clerk; application was to be made by letter.

He wrote, and two days later, to his astonishment, received a reply asking him to wait upon the secretary at a certain hour.

In a fever of agitation he kept the appointment, and found that his business was with a young man in the very highest spirits, who walked up and down a little office (the hospital was of the 'special' order, a house of no great size), and treated the matter in hand as an excellent joke.
'I thought, you know, of engaging someone much younger--quite a lad, in fact.