ht, and a line
from Jack Simpson about that woman down St. John's Wood way. Seems he's
found her, so that's off."

"Humph! business is slack," remarked a younger edition of the old
gentleman, who was standing on the hearth rug, with his silk hat on the
back of his head, in an attitude of unstudied grace.

"Say, guv'nor, you couldn't let me have a fiver, could you? Must keep up
the credit of the firm, don't you know, and I'm awfully hard up. 'Pon my
word, I am."

"I couldn't do anything of the sort!" exclaimed the old gentleman
testily. "Certainly not. The way you spend money is grievous to me,
Benjamin, positively grievous!"

He turned round in his chair, and with his spectacles on the top of his
head surveyed his son and heir with a sorrowful interest.

"Oh, hang it all, some one must spend the money if we're to keep the
business at all!" retorted Mr. Benjamin testily. "I can't live as I do
without it, you know; and how are we to get the information we want?
Look at the company I keep, too."

The old gentleman seemed mollified.

"There's something in that, Ben," he remarked, slowly wagging his head.
"There's something in that, of course. Bless me, your mother was telling
me you was with a lord the other day!"

Mr. Benjamin expanded a little with the recollection, and smiled gently.

"That was quite true, dad," he remarked with a grandiloquent air. "I was
just going into the Cri--let me see, on Tuesday night it was--when whom
should I run up against but little Tommy Soampton with a pal, and we all
had drinks together. He was a quiet-looking chap, not dressed half so
well as--er----"

"As you, Ben," interposed his father proudly.

"Well, I wasn't thinking of myself particularly," Mr. Benjamin
continued, twirling an incipient mustache, and looking pleased. "But
when Tommy introduced him as Lord Mossford, I was that surprised I
nearly dropped my glass."

"What did you say to him, Ben?" asked the little old gentleman in an
awed tone.

Ben drew himself up and smiled.

"I asked him how his lordship was, and whether his lordship'd take
anything."

"And did he, Ben?" asked his father eagerly.

"Rather! He was just as affable as you like. I got on with him no end."

The little old gentleman turned away to his letters again to hide a
gratified smile.

"Well, well, Ben, I suppose you must have it," he said leniently. "Young
men will be young men. Only remember this, my boy--wherever you are,
always keep an