waggoner."

Then, the room being at last empty, he would hastily copy an
advertisement on a scrap of paper, then another, and slip out in immense
relief. His mother would scan over his copies.

"Yes," she said, "you may try."

William had written out a letter of application, couched in admirable
business language, which Paul copied, with variations. The boy's
handwriting was execrable, so that William, who did all things well, got
into a fever of impatience.

The elder brother was becoming quite swanky. In London he found that he
could associate with men far above his Bestwood friends in station. Some
of the clerks in the office had studied for the law, and were more or
less going through a kind of apprenticeship. William always made friends
among men wherever he went, he was so jolly. Therefore he was soon
visiting and staying in houses of men who, in Bestwood, would have
looked down on the unapproachable bank manager, and would merely have
called indifferently on the Rector. So he began to fancy himself as a
great gun. He was, indeed, rather surprised at the ease with which he
became a gentleman.

His mother was glad, he seemed so pleased. And his lodging in
Walthamstow was so dreary. But now there seemed to come a kind of fever
into the young man's letters. He was unsettled by all the change, he did
not stand firm on his own feet, but seemed to spin rather giddily on the
quick current of the new life. His mother was anxious for him. She could
feel him losing himself. He had danced and gone to the theatre, boated
on the river, been out with friends; and she knew he sat up afterwards
in his cold bedroom grinding away at Latin, because he intended to get
on in his office, and in the law as much as he could. He never sent his
mother any money now. It was all taken, the little he had, for his own
life. And she did not want any, except sometimes, when she was in a
tight corner, and when ten shillings would have saved her much worry.
She still dreamed of William, and of what he would do, with herself
behind him. Never for a minute would she admit to herself how heavy and
anxious her heart was because of him.

Also he talked a good deal now of a girl he had met at a dance, a
handsome brunette, quite young, and a lady, after whom the men were
running thick and fast.

"I wonder if you would run, my boy," his mother wrote to him, "unless
you saw all the other men chasing her too. You feel safe enough and vain
enough i