me back with it,
marked a hundred, and a fellow with it, hat in hand, ready, if I'd
refused again, to offer me more."

"Frank," cried Richard, jumping up, and shaking his friend warmly by the
hand, "no one is more delighted than I am."

"Mind what you're up to," said Pratt, who had nearly been tilted off his
perch by his friend's energy. "But I say, it don't seem like it."

"Why?"

"Because you won't share in it. Now, look here, Dick, old fellow, you
must want money, and it's too bad that you won't take it."

"I don't want it, Frank--I don't, indeed," cried Richard, hastily.
"Living as I do, I have enough and to spare. I tell you, I like the
change."

"Gammon," said Pratt, shortly. "It's very well to talk about liking to
be poor, and no one knows what poverty is better than I; but I like
money as well as most men. I used to eat chaff, Dick; but I like corn,
and wine, and oil, and honey better. Now, look here, Dick, once for
all--if you want money, and don't come to me for it, you are no true
friend."

"Franky," said Richard, turning away his face, "if ever I want money,
I'll come to you and ask for it. As matters are, I have always a few
shillings to spare."

As he spoke, he got up hastily, lit a pipe, and began to smoke; while
Mrs Fiddison in the next room, heaved a sigh, took off her shoes, and
went on tiptoe through the little house, opening every door and window,
after carefully covering up all her widows' caps.

"There is one thing about noise," she said to herself, "it don't make
the millinery smell."

"I knocked off a few days ago," said Frank, from out of a cloud.

"You are working too hard," said Richard, anxiously.

"'Bliged to," said Pratt. "Took a change--ran down to Cornwall."

Richard started slightly, and smoked hard.

"Thought I'd have a look at the old place, Dick--see how matters were
going on."

Silence on the part of Richard, and Pratt breathed more freely; for he
had expected to be stopped.

"First man I ran against was that Mervyn, along with the chap who was
upset in the cab accident in Pall Mall, and gave you his card--a Mr
John Barnard, solicitor, in Furnival's Inn--cousin or something of
Mervyn's--knew me by sight, and somehow we got to be very sociable.
Don't much like Mervyn, though. Good sort of fellow all the same--
charitable, and so on."

Richard smoked his pipe in silence longing to hear more of his old home,
though every word respecting it came like a sta