oking apples, and
her response to his diffident greeting was accompanied by a sorrowful
wag of the head. The newspaper boy at the entrance to the station had
extended his _Express_ almost doubtfully and had clutched with
significant caution at the copper coin tendered in exchange for it.
The station master had answered his "Good morning" without troubling
to turn his head, and the ticket collector had yawned as he moved
away from the barrier. Each one of these incidents, trifling though
they were in themselves, had been like pinpricks of humiliation to the
little man whose geniality had been almost a byword.

The worst trial of all, however, arrived when Jacob entered the
carriage in which he had been accustomed, for six days out of seven,
to make his journey to the city. As usual, it was occupied by two men,
strangers to him commercially, but with whom he had developed a very
pleasant acquaintance; Mr. Stephen Pedlar, the well-known accountant
to the trade in which Jacob was interested; Mr. Lionel Groome, whose
life was spent in a strenuous endeavour to combine the two avocations
of man of fashion and liquid glue manufacturer; and--Mr. Edward
Bultiwell, of Bultiwell and Sons, Bermondsey, his former condescending
patron and occasional host, now, alas! his largest creditor. The
porter, being for the first time unaccountably absent, Jacob was
compelled to open the door for himself, thereby rendering his nervous
entrance more self-conscious than ever. He found himself confronted
and encircled by a solid wall of newspapers, stumbled over an
outstretched foot, relapsed into the vacant place and looked
helplessly around him. A kind word just then might not have helped the
lump in Jacob's throat, but it would certainly have brought a fortune
in later life to any one who had uttered it.

"Good morning, gentlemen," the newcomer ventured.

There was a muttered response from either side of him,--none from the
august figure in the opposite corner. Jacob fingered with tentative
wistfulness the very choice rose which he was wearing in his
buttonhole. Perhaps he ought not to have plucked and worn it. Perhaps
it ought not to have opened its soft, sweet petals for an owner who
was dwelling in the Valley of Impecunious Disgrace. Perhaps he ought
to have ended there and then the good-natured rivalry of years and
offered the cherished blossom to his silent creditor in the corner,
in place of the very inferior specimen which adorned the