He lay back exhausted with this effort.

“Oh, stuff and nonsense, Linn!” his friend exclaimed, in apparent anger.  “What’s the use of talking like that!  You know you were worried into this illness, and I want to explain to you that you needn’t worry any longer, that you’ve nothing to do but get well!  Now listen—­and be quiet.  To begin with, Lord Rockminster has got his three hundred pounds—­”

“I remember about that—­it was awfully good of you, Maurice—­”

“Be quiet.  Then there’s that diabolical eleven hundred pounds.  Well, things have to be faced,” continued Mangan, with a matter-of-fact air.  “It’s no use sighing and groaning when you or your friends are in a pickle; you’ve just got to make the best of it.  Very well.  Do you see this slip of paper?—­this is a check for eleven hundred pounds, drawn out and signed by me, Maurice Mangan, barrister-at-law, and author of several important works not yet written.  I took it up this afternoon to that young fellow’s rooms in Bruton Street, to get a receipt for the money, for I thought that would satisfy you better; but I found he was in Paris.  Never mind.  There is the check, and I am going to post it directly, so that he will get it the moment he returns—­”

“Maurice, you must ask Francie.”

“I will not ask Francie,” his friend said, promptly.  “Francie must attend to her own affairs until she has acquired the legal right to control me and mine.  You needn’t make a fuss about a little thing like that, Linn.  I can easily make it up; in fact, I may say I have already secured a means of making it up, as a telegram I received this very afternoon informs me.  Here is the story:  I can talk to you, if you may not talk to me, and I want you to know that everything is straight and clear and arranged.  About ten days ago I had a letter from a syndicate in the North asking me if I could write for them a weekly article—­not a London correspondent’s news-letter—­but a series of comments on the important subjects of the day, outside politics.  Outside politics, of course; for I dare say they will supply this article to sixty or eighty country papers.  Very well.  You know what a lazy wretch I am; I declined.  Then yesterday, when I was dawdling about the house here, it suddenly occurred to me that after all I couldn’t do better than sit down and write to my enterprising friends in the North, and tell them that they could have that weekly column of enlightenment, if they hadn’t engaged any one else, and if they were prepared to pay well enough for it.  This afternoon comes their answer; here it is:  ’Offer still open? will four hundred suit you?’ Four hundred pounds a year will suit me very well.”

“Maurice, you’re taking on all that additional work on my account,” Lionel managed to say, by way of feeble protest.