asked,
when, in the evening domesticity of Dawes Road, Henry recounted the
doings of that day so full of emotions.

'Not I!' Henry replied. 'Not a word!'

'You did quite right, my dear!' said Aunt Annie. 'A pretty thing, that
you can't go out for a few minutes!'

'Yes, isn't it?' said Henry.

'Whatever will Sir George do without you, though?' his mother wondered.

And later, after he had displayed for her inspection the cheque for a
thousand and eighty pounds, the old lady cried, with moist eyes:

'My darling, your poor father might well insist on having you called
Shakspere! And to think that I didn't want it! To think that I didn't
want it!'

'Mark my words!' said Aunt Annie. 'Sir George will ask you to stay on.'

And Aunt Annie was not deceived.

'I hope you've come to your senses,' the lawyer began early the next
morning, not unkindly, but rather with an intention obviously pacific.
'Literature, or whatever you call it, may be all very well, but you
won't get another place like this in a hurry. There's many an admitted
solicitor earns less than you, young man.'

'Thanks very much, Sir George,' Henry answered. 'But I think, on the
whole, I had better leave.'

'As you wish,' said Sir George, hurt.

'Still,' Henry proceeded, 'I hope our relations will remain pleasant. I
hope I may continue to employ you.'

'Continue to employ me?' Sir George gasped.

'Yes,' said Henry. 'I got you to invest some moneys for me some time
ago. I have another thousand now that I want a sound security for.'

It was one of those rare flashes of his--rare, but blindingly brilliant.

CHAPTER XX

PRESS AND PUBLIC

At length arrived the eve of the consummation of Mr. Onions Winter's
mercantile labours. Forty thousand copies of _A Question of Cubits_ (No.
8 of the Satin Library) had been printed, and already, twenty-four hours
before they were to shine in booksellers' shops and on the counters of
libraries, every copy had been sold to the trade and a second edition
was in the press. Thus, it was certain that one immortal soul per
thousand of the entire British race would read Henry's story. In
literature, when nine hundred and ninety-nine souls ignore you, but the
thousandth buys your work, or at least borrows it--that is called
enormous popularity. Henry retired to bed in Dawes Road that night sure
of his enormous popularity. But he did not dream of the devoted army of
forty thousand admirers. He dreamt of the revi