be practical!' cried Merton. 'Be inventive! Be modern! Be up to
date! Think of something _new_! Think of a felt want, as the
Covenanting divine calls it: a real public need, hitherto but dimly
present, and quite a demand without a supply.'

'But that means thousands in advertisements,' said Logan, 'even if we ran
a hair-restorer. The ground bait is too expensive. I say, I once knew a
fellow who ground-baited for salmon with potted shrimps.'

'Make a paragraph on him then,' said Merton.

'But results proved that there was no felt want of potted shrimps--or not
of a fly to follow.'

'Your collaboration in the search, the hunt for money, the quest,
consists merely in irrelevancies and objections,' growled Merton,
lighting a cigarette.

'Lucky devil, Peter Nevison. Meets an heiress on a Channel boat, with
4,000_l_. a year; and there he is.' Logan basked in the reflected
sunshine.

'Cut by her people, though--and other people. I could not have faced the
row with her people,' said Merton musingly.

'I don't wonder they moved heaven and earth, and her uncle, the bishop,
to stop it. Not eligible, Peter was not, however you took him,' Logan
reflected. 'Took too much of this,' he pointed to the heraldic flask.

'Well, _she_ took him. It is not much that parents, still less
guardians, can do now, when a girl's mind is made up.'

'The emancipation of woman is the opportunity of the indigent male
struggler. Women have their way,' Logan reflected.

'And the youth of the modern aged is the opportunity of our sisters, the
girls "on the make,"' said Merton. 'What a lot of old men of title are
marrying young women as hard up as we are!'

'And then,' said Logan, 'the offspring of the deceased marchionesses make
a fuss. In fact marriage is always the signal for a family row.'

'It is the infernal family row that I never could face. I had a chance--'

Merton seemed likely to drop into autobiography.

'I know,' said Logan admonishingly.

'Well, hanged if I could take it, and she--she could not stand it either,
and both of us--'

'Do not be elegiac,' interrupted Logan. 'I know. Still, I am rather
sorry for people's people. The unruly affections simply poison the lives
of parents and guardians, aye, and of the children too. The aged are now
so hasty and imprudent. What would not Tala have given to prevent his
Grace from marrying Mrs. Tankerville?'

Merton leapt to his feet and smote his brow.

'Wait