curse him inwardly.

"Ah, ha!" said Sir Raffle. "You wouldn't be here unless you knew
where a good thing is to be picked up. But I must be off. I'm on the
Rocky Mountain Canal Company Directory. I'm not above taking my two
guineas a day. Good-by, my boy. Remember me to old Optimist." And so
Sir Raffle passed on, leaving Crosbie still standing at the corner of
the lane.

What was he to do? This interruption had at least seemed to drive
Lily from his mind, and to send his ideas back to the consideration
of his pecuniary difficulties. He thought of his own bank, a West-End
establishment at which he was personally known to many of the clerks,
and where he had been heretofore treated with great consideration.
But of late his balances had been very low, and more than once he had
been reminded that he had overdrawn his account. He knew well that
the distinguished firm of Bounce, Bounce, and Bounce would not cash a
bill for him or lend him money without security. He did not even dare
to ask them to do so.

On a sudden he jumped into a cab, and was driven back to his office.
A thought had come upon him. He would throw himself upon the kindness
of a friend there. Hitherto he had contrived to hold his head so high
above the clerks below him, so high before the Commissioners who were
above him, that none there suspected him to be a man in difficulty.
It not seldom happens that a man's character stands too high for his
interest,--so high that it cannot be maintained, and so high that any
fall will be dangerous. And so it was with Crosbie and his character
at the General Committee Office. The man to whom he was now thinking
of applying as his friend was a certain Mr. Butterwell, who had been
his predecessor in the secretary's chair, and who now filled the less
onerous but more dignified position of a Commissioner. Mr. Crosbie
had somewhat despised Mr. Butterwell, and had of late years not been
averse to showing that he did so. He had snubbed Mr. Butterwell, and
Mr. Butterwell, driven to his wits' ends, had tried a fall or two
with him. In all these struggles Crosbie had had the best of it,
and Butterwell had gone to the wall. Nevertheless, for the sake of
official decency, and from certain wise remembrances of the sources
of official comfort and official discomfort, Mr. Butterwell had always
maintained a show of outward friendship with the secretary. They
smiled and were gracious, called each other Butterwell and Crosbie,
and ab