buttons to be one myself.  Don’t tell her I was invalided from the service, Richie, for the truth is, I believe, I half-shammed.  And the time won’t be lost.  You’ll see I shall extract guineas from “old ocean” like salt.  Precious few barristers understand maritime cases.  The other day I was in Court, and prompted a great Q.C. in a case of collision.  Didn’t I, sir?’

’I think there was a hoarse whisper audible up to the Judge’s seat at intervals,’ said Mr. Temple.

’The Bar cannot confess to obligations from those who don’t wear the robe,’ Temple rejoined.

His father advised me to read for the Bar, as a piece of very good training.

I appealed to Temple, whether he thought it possible to read law-books in a cockboat in a gale of wind.

Temple grimaced and his father nodded.  Still it struck me that I might one day have the felicity of quiet hours to sit down with Temple and read Law—­far behind him in the race.  And he envied me, in his friendly manner, I knew.  My ambition had been blown to tatters.

A new day dawned.  The household rose and met at the breakfast-table, devoid of any dread of the morning newspapers.  Their talk was like the chirrup of birds.  Temple and his father walked away together to chambers, bent upon actual business—­upon doing something!  I reflected emphatically, and compared them to ships with rudders, while I was at the mercy of wind, tide, and wave.  I called at Dettermain and Newson’s, and heard there of a discovery of a witness essential to the case, either in North Wales or in New South.  I did not, as I had intended, put a veto on their proceedings.  The thing to do was to see my father, and cut the case at the fountain head.  For this purpose, it was imperative that I should go to him, and prepare myself for the interview by looking at the newspapers first.  I bought one, hastily running my eyes down the columns in the shop.  His name was printed, but merely in a fashionable notification that carriages took up and set down for his costume Ball, according to certain regulations.  The relief of comparative obscurity helped me to breathe freely:  not to be laughed at, was a gain.  I was rather inclined to laud his courage in entering assembly-rooms, where he must be aware that he would see the Dauphin on every face.  Perhaps he was guilty of some new extravagance last night, too late for scandal to reinforce the reporters!

Mrs. Waddy had a woeful visage when informing me that he was out, gone to Courtenay Square.  She ventured a murmur of bills coming in.  Like everybody else, she fancied he drew his supplies from my inexhaustible purse; she hoped the bills would be paid off immediately:  the servants’ wages were overdue.  ‘Never can I get him to attend to small accounts,’ she whimpered, and was so ready to cry outright, that I said, ‘Tusk,’ and with the one word gave her comfort.  ’Of course, you, Mr. Harry, can settle them, I know that.’  We were drawing near to poor old Sewis’s legacy, even for the settling of the small accounts!