like to discuss it with you. Are you in
town or to be found? I could come any afternoon next week, _early_--I go
down to the House at four--or on Saturdays. But I should like it to be
Tuesday or Wednesday, that I might try and persuade you to come to our
Eight Hours debate on Friday night. It would interest you, and I think I
could get you a seat. We Labour members are like the Irishmen--we can
always get our friends in.

"I must send this round by Mellor, so it may not reach you till Tuesday.
Perhaps you will kindly telegraph. The _Clarion_ matter is pressing.

"Yours sincerely,

"H.S. WHARTON."

When he had finished he lingered a moment over the letter, the play of
conflicting motives and memories bringing a vague smile to the lips.

Reverie, however, was soon dispersed. He recollected his other
correspondents, and springing up he began to pace his room, gloomily
thinking over his money difficulties, which were many. He and his mother
had always been in want of money ever since he could remember. Lady
Mildred would spend huge sums on her various crotchets and campaigns,
and then subside for six months into wretched lodgings in a back street
of Southsea or Worthing, while the Suffolk house was let, and her son
mostly went abroad. This perpetual worry of needy circumstances had
always, indeed, sat lightly on Wharton. He was unmarried, and so far
scarcity had generally passed into temporary comfort before he had time
to find it intolerable. But now the whole situation was becoming more
serious. In the first place, his subscriptions and obligations as a
member of Parliament, and as one of the few propertied persons in a
moneyless movement, were considerable. Whatever Socialism might make of
money in the future, he was well aware that money in the present was no
less useful to a Socialist politician than to any one else. In the next
place, the starting and pushing of the _Clarion_ newspaper--originally
purchased by the help of a small legacy from an uncle--had enormously
increased the scale of his money transactions and the risks of life.

How was it that, with all his efforts, the _Clarion_ was not making, but
losing money? During the three years he had possessed it he had raised
it from the position of a small and foul-mouthed print, indifferently
nourished on a series of small scandals, to that of a Labour organ of
some importance. He had written a weekly signed article for it, which
had served from the begin