“I suppose Jimmy never told you how he and I first met, did he?” he asked.

“No.”  Her sensitive little face flushed; she looked up at him eagerly.

“It isn’t a bit romantic really,” he said.  “At least, not from my point of view; but I dare say you would be interested, because it shows what a fine chap Jimmy really is.”  He took it for granted that she was listening.  He went on:  “It was some years ago now, of course—­five years, I think; and I was broke—­broke to the wide, if you know what that means!” He glanced down at her smilingly.  “I’m by way of being a struggling journalist, you know,” he explained.  “More of the struggling than the journalist.  I’m not a bit of good at the job, to be quite candid; but it’s a life I like—­and lately I’ve managed to scrape along quite decently.  Anyhow, at the time I met Jimmy I was down and out . . .  Fleet Street would have none of me, and I even had to pawn my watch.”

“Oh!” said Christine with soft sympathy.

Sangster laughed.

“That’s nothing; it’s been pawned fifty times since it first came into my possession, I should think.  Don’t think I’m asking for sympathy—­I’m not.  It’s the sort of life that suits me, and I wouldn’t change it for another—­even if I had the chance.  But the night I ran across Jimmy I was fairly up against it.  I hadn’t had a square meal for a week, and I was ill to add to the trouble.  Jimmy was coming along Pall Mall in evening-dress.  He was smoking a cigar that smelt good, and I wondered as he passed me if I dared go up and ask him for a shilling.”

“Oh, Mr. Sangster!” He looked down hearing the distress in her voice.

“Don’t look so sorry!” he said very gently.  “It’s all in a day’s march for me.  I’ve had my good times, and I’ve had my bad; and when I come to write the story of my life—­when I’m a bloated millionaire, that is!” he added in laughing parenthesis—­“it will make fine reading to know that I was once so hard up that I cadged a shilling off a swell in evening-dress!”

But Christine did not laugh; her eyes were almost tragic as she looked up wonderingly at Sangster’s honest face.

“And—­and did you ask him?” she questioned.

“Did I not!” said Sangster heartily.  “I went up to him—­Jimmy stopped dead, I believe he thought I was going to pinch his watch—­and I said, ‘Will you be a sport and lend me a bob?’ Not a bit romantic, you see!”

Christine caught her breath.

“And did he—­did he?” she asked eagerly.

Sangster laughed reminiscently.

“You’ll never guess what he said.  He asked no questions, he took the cigar from his lips and looked at me, and he said, ’I haven’t got a bob in the world till my brother, the Great Horatio, sends my monthly allowance along; but if you’ll come as far as the next street, I know a chap I can borrow a sovereign from.’  Wasn’t that just Jimmy all over?”