"I fled from the house, my home no longer. On the way to the front
door I had sufficient presence of mind, and no more, to make a
_detour_ to the larder and possess myself of the longest joint; which
my heated judgment, confusing temporal with linear measurement,
commended to me as the most lasting. It proved to be a shin of beef:
unnutritious except for soup (and I carried no tureen), useless as an
object of barter. With this and two half-crowns in my pocket I
slammed the front-door behind me and faced the future."

Mr. Fett paused impressively.

"And you call me an original, sir!" he went on in accents of
reproach; "me, who started in life with two half-crowns in my pocket,
the conventional outfit for a career of commercial success!"

"They have carried you all the way to Falmouth!"

"The one of them carried me so far as to Coventry, sir: where,
finding a fair in progress as I passed through the town, and falling
in with three bridesmaids who had missed their wedding-party in the
crowd, I spent the other in treating them to the hobby-horses at one
halfpenny a ride. Four halfpennies--there were four of us--make
twopence, and two's into thirty are fifteen rides; a bold investment
of capital, and undertaken (I will confess it) not only to solace the
fair ones but to ingratiate myself with the fellow who turned the
handle of the machine. To him I applied for a job. He had none to
offer, but introduced me to a company of strolling players who (as
fortune would have it) were on the point of presenting _Hamlet_ with
a _dramatis_ personae decimated by Coventry ale. They cast me for
'Polonius' and some other odds and ends. You may remember, sir, that