will show. In the meanwhile, I wish you
good-morning--and I own, to my shame, that I never knew till to-day what
a hero you were."

This time, Mr. Bashwood felt the sting. Without another word of
expostulation or entreaty, without even saying "Good-morning" on his
side, he walked to the door, opened it, softly, and left the room.

The parting look in his face, and the sudden silence that had fallen on
him, were not lost on Pedgift Senior. "Bashwood will end badly," said
the lawyer, shuffling his papers, and returning impenetrably to his
interrupted work.

The change in Mr. Bashwood's face and manner to something dogged and
self-contained was so startlingly uncharacteristic of him, that it
even forced itself on the notice of Pedgift Junior and the clerks as he
passed through the outer office. Accustomed to make the old man their
butt, they took a boisterously comic view of the marked alteration in
him. Deaf to the merciless raillery with which he was assailed on all
sides, he stopped opposite young Pedgift, and, looking him attentively
in the face, said, in a quiet, absent manner, like a man thinking aloud,
"I wonder whether _you_ would help me?"

"Open an account instantly," said Pedgift Junior to the clerks, "in the
name of Mr. Bashwood. Place a chair for Mr. Bashwood, with a footstool
close by, in case he wants it. Supply me with a quire of extra
double-wove satin paper, and a gross of picked quills, to take notes of
Mr. Bashwood's case; and inform my father instantly that I am going
to leave him and set up in business for myself, on the strength of Mr.
Bashwood's patronage. Take a seat, sir, pray take a seat, and express
your feelings freely."

Still impenetrably deaf to the raillery of which he was the object, Mr.
Bashwood waited until Pedgift Junior had exhausted himself, and then
turned quietly away.

"I ought to have known better," he said, in the same absent manner as
before. "He is his father's son all over--he would make game of me on
my death-bed." He paused a moment at the door, mechanically brushing his
hat with his hand, and went out into the street.

The bright sunshine dazzled his eyes, the passing vehicles and
foot-passengers startled and bewildered him. He shrank into a by-street,
and put his hand over his eyes. "I'd better go home," he thought, "and
shut myself up, and think about it in my own room."

His lodging was in a small house, in the poor quarter of the town. He
let himself in with h