Перевидите) if you are not wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. the poor should be practical and prosaic. it is better to have a permanent income than to be charming. these are the great truths of modern life which hughie erskine never realised. poor hughie! he was wonderfully good-looking, but poor. to make matters worse, he was in love. the girl he loved was laura merton, the daughter of a retired colonel. laura adored him, and he was ready to kiss her shoestrings. they were the handsomest couple in london, and had not a penny between them. the colonel was very fond of hughie, but would not hear of any engagement. "come to me, my boy, when you have got ten thousand pounds of your own, and we'll see about it," he used to say; and that made hughie very unhappy. one morning, as he was on his way to holland park, where the mertons lived, he dropped to see his friend alan trevor, a painter. when hughie came in he found trevor putting the finishing touches to a wonderful life-size picture of a beggar-man. the beggar himself was standing on a raised platform in a corner of the studio. he was a wizened old man, wit! ) a wrinkled face, and a most piteous expression. "what an amazing model! " whispered hughie, as he shook hands with his friend. "an amazing model? " cried trevor. "i should think so! you don't meet such beggars every day. what an etching rembrandt would have made of him! " "poor old man! " said hughie, "how miserable he looks! " "certainly," replied trevor, "you don't want a beggar to look happy, do you? " at this moment the servant came in, and told trevor that the framemaker wanted to speak to him. "don't run away, hughie," he said, as he went out, "i'll be back in a moment." the old beggar-man took advantage of trevor's absence to rest for a moment on a wooden bench that was behind him. he looked so miserable that hughie could not help pitying him, and felt in his pockets to see what money he had. all he could find was a sovereign and some coppers. "poor old fellow," he thought to himself, "he wants it more than i do", and he walked across the studio and slipped the sovereign into the beggar's hand. the old man got up, and a faint smile appeared on his lips. "thank you, sir," he said, "thank you."
