Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself, but he hadn’t painted any portraits. He was sitting on the sidelines with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting⁠—I’ve looked into the thing a bit⁠—is that you can’t start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won’t come and ask you to until you’ve painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a chappie. Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture for the comic papers⁠—he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got a good idea⁠—and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the advertisements. His principal source of income, however, was derived from biting the ear of a rich uncle⁠—one Alexander Worple, who was in the jute business. I’m a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it’s apparently something the populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had made quite an indecently large stack out of it.