ter to-morrow and
you'll get your money.'

'Shall I sure?'

'I don't bilk, and you won't know whether I do or not unless you come.

Oh, but it's long and long to wait! Good-bye, Bessie,--send Beeton here
as you go out.'

The housekeeper came.

'What are all the fittings of my rooms worth?' said Dick, imperiously.

''Tisn't for me to say, sir. Some things is very pretty and some is wore
out dreadful.'

'I'm insured for two hundred and seventy.'

'Insurance policies is no criterion, though I don't say----'

'Oh, damn your longwindedness! You've made your pickings out of me and
the other tenants. Why, you talked of retiring and buying a public-house
the other day. Give a straight answer to a straight question.'

'Fifty,' said Mr. Beeton, without a moment's hesitation.

'Double it; or I'll break up half my sticks and burn the rest.'

He felt his way to a bookstand that supported a pile of sketch-books,
and wrenched out one of the mahogany pillars.

'That's sinful, sir,' said the housekeeper, alarmed.

'It's my own. One hundred or----'

'One hundred it is. It'll cost me three and six to get that there
pilaster mended.'

'I thought so. What an out and out swindler you must have been to spring
that price at once!'

'I hope I've done nothing to dissatisfy any of the tenants, least of all
you, sir.'

'Never mind that. Get me the money to-morrow, and see that all my
clothes are packed in the little brown bullock-trunk. I'm going.'

'But the quarter's notice?'

'I'll pay forfeit. Look after the packing and leave me alone.'

Mr. Beeton discussed this new departure with his wife, who decided that
Bessie was at the bottom of it all. Her husband took a more charitable
view.

'It's very sudden--but then he was always sudden in his ways. Listen to
him now!'

There was a sound of chanting from Dick's room.

'We'll never come back any more, boys,
We'll never come back no more;
We'll go to the deuce on any excuse,
And never come back no more!

Oh say we're afloat or ashore, boys,
Oh say we're afloat or ashore;
But we'll never come back any more, boys,
We'll never come back no more!'

'Mr. Beeton! Mr. Beeton! Where the deuce is my pistol?'

'Quick, he's going to shoot himself--'avin' gone mad!' said Mrs. Beeton.

Mr. Beeton addressed Dick soothingly, but it was some time before the
latter, threshing up and down his bedroom, could realise the intention
of the pro