ar Jack," he says, "I shall
have to get you to renew it, just for a month or two,--deuced awkward
thing, but I'm remarkably short of money this year. Truth is, I can't
get what's owing to myself."

"That's very awkward, certainly," replies his friend, "because I am not
at all sure that I shall be able to renew it."

Will stares at him in some alarm. "But what am I to do if I hav'n't the
money?"

John Ingerfield shrugs his shoulders.

"You don't mean, my dear Jack, that you would put me in prison?"

"Why not? Other people have to go there who can't pay their debts."

Will Cathcart's alarm grows to serious proportions. "But our
friendship," he cries, "our--"

"My dear Will," interrupts the other, "there are few friends I would lend
three hundred pounds to and make no effort to get it back. You,
certainly, are not one of them."

"Let us make a bargain," he continues. "Find me a wife, and on the day
of my marriage I will send you back that bill with, perhaps, a couple of
hundred added. If by the end of next month you have not introduced me to
a lady fit to be, and willing to be, Mrs. John Ingerfield, I shall
decline to renew it."

John Ingerfield refills his own glass and hospitably pushes the bottle
towards his guest--who, however, contrary to his custom, takes no notice
of it, but stares hard at his shoe-buckles.

"Are you serious?" he says at length.

"Quite serious," is the answer. "I want to marry. My wife must be a
lady by birth and education. She must be of good family--of family
sufficiently good, indeed, to compensate for the refinery. She must be
young and beautiful and charming. I am purely a business man. I want a
woman capable of conducting the social department of my life. I know of
no such lady myself. I appeal to you, because you, I know, are intimate
with the class among whom she must be sought."

"There may be some difficulty in persuading a lady of the required
qualifications to accept the situation," says Cathcart, with a touch of
malice.

"I want you to find one who will," says John Ingerfield.

Early in the evening Will Cathcart takes leave of his host, and departs
thoughtful and anxious; and John Ingerfield strolls contemplatively up
and down his wharf, for the smell of oil and tallow has grown to be very
sweet to him, and it is pleasant to watch the moonbeams shining on the
piled-up casks.

Six weeks go by. On the first day of the seventh John takes Will
Cathcart's