s complete, and even then Mr
Durfy's powers of speech had not returned. With a malignant scowl he
stepped up to his enemy and hissed the one menace,--

"All right!" and then walked away.

Reginald waited till he had disappeared round the corner, and then,
turning to his companion, took a long breath and said,--

"Come along, young 'un; it can't be helped."

The reader must forgive me if I ask him to leave the two lads to walk to
Dull Street by themselves, while he accompanies me in the wake of the
outraged and mud-stained Mr Durfy.

That gentleman was far more wounded in his mind than in his person. He
may have been knocked down before in his life, but he had never, as far
as he could recollect, been quite so summarily routed by a boy half his
age earning only eighteen shillings a week! And the conviction that
some people would think he had only got his deserts in what he had
suffered, pained him very much indeed.

He did not go to the Alhambra. His clothes were too dirty, and his
spirits were far too low. He did, in the thriftiness of his soul,
attempt to sell his orders in the crowd at the theatre door. But no one
rose to the bait, so he had to put them back in his pocket on the chance
of being able to "doctor up" the date and crush in with them some other
day. Then he mooned listlessly up and down the streets for an hour till
his clothes were dry, and then turned into a public-house to get a brush
down and while away another hour.

Still the vision of Reginald standing where he had last seen him with
young Gedge at his side haunted him and spoiled his pleasure. He
wandered forth again, feeling quite lonely, and wishing some one or
something would turn up to comfort him. Nor was he disappointed.

"The very chap," said a voice suddenly at his side when he was beginning
to despair of any diversion.

"So it is. How are you, my man? We were talking of you not two minutes
ago."

Durfy pulled up and found himself confronted by two gentlemen, one about
forty and the other a fashionable young man of twenty-five.

"How are you, Mr Medlock?" said he to the elder in as familiar a tone
as he could assume; "glad to see you, sir. How are you, too, Mr
Shanklin, pretty well?"

"Pretty fair," said Mr Shanklin. "Come and have a drink, Durfy. You
look all in the blues. Gone in love, I suppose, eh? or been speculating
on the Stock Exchange? You shouldn't, you know, a respectable man like
you."

"He looks