he wrote to his uncle and to the Dean of the University, and received the conventional replies. But these were of no avail to introduce him to work for which he had no particular qualifications, in a city of which he had had no experience, over rivals who had none of his shamefacedness and who elbowed him out of the way with a pushing self-assertion that made him blush for them. He answered every likely advertisement and registered with three different employment agencies that accepted his $2 fee one day and appeared to have forgotten him on the morrow; and he clung to his hopes with a doggedness that would not admit discouragement. But he became sore with a sort of sulky pride, refusing to unbend to the degrading necessities of his situation; and he made his applications for work as haughtily as a shop-girl who has been asked to show samples and who answers all her customer's inquiries laconically, with a studied indifference.
Meanwhile, Conroy had become morosely apathetic. He sat in their rooms smoking at a window that looked out on dead walls. He wrote letters to which he never seemed to get any replies. He went out silently, and- after being on the streets for hours he came back to his meals tired but without any appetite; and in conversation with Pittsey, he betrayed an idler's acquaintance with the sights of the water-front and the Ghetto. He accepted money from Don unhappily, unable to meet his cousin's eyes; and he tried to make himself useful by doing more than his share of the housework, by washing the dishes when the other boys were out, and by bringing Italian cheeses
