It was not until another day had passed that I sufficiently recovered my composure to see poverty staring me in the face, and to understand that I had really no alternative but to ask the good-natured artist to lend me a helping hand.
I had heard it darkly whispered that he was something of a vagabond.

But the term is so loosely applied, and it seems so difficult, after all, to define what a vagabond is, or to strike the right moral balance between the vagabond work which is boldly published, and the vagabond work which is reserved for private circulation only, that I did not feel justified in holding aloof from my former friend.

Accordingly, I renewed our acquaintance, and told him my present difficulty.

He was a sharp man, and he showed me a way out of it directly.
"You have a good eye for a likeness," he said; "and you have made it keep you hitherto.

Very well.