band to
Dolly Stewart is sure to be a brother to _me_."

And they went back to town, talking little by the way, for each was
thoughtful,--M'Grader thinking much over all they had been saying; Tony
full of the future, yet not able to exclude the past.

CHAPTER XXXVII. MR. BUTLER FOR DUTY ON------

"I suppose M'Gruder's right," mattered Tony, as he sauntered away
drearily from the door at Downing Street, one day in the second week
after his arrival in London. "A man gets to feel very like a 'flunkey,'
coming up in this fashion each morning 'for orders.' I am more than half
disposed to close with his offer and go 'into rags' at once."

If he hesitated, be assured himself, very confidently too, that it
was not from the name or nature of the commercial operation. He had no
objection to trade in rags any more than in hides or tallow or oakum,
and some gum which did not "breathe of Araby the blest." He was sure
that it could not possibly affect his choice, and that rags were just as
legitimate and just as elevating a speculation as sherry from Cadiz or
silk from China. He was ingenious enough in his self-discussions; but
somehow, though he thought he could tell his mother frankly and honestly
the new trade he was about to embark in, for the life of him he could
not summon courage to make the communication to Alice. He fancied her,
as she read the avowal, repeating the word "rags," and, while her lips
trembled with the coming laughter, saying, "What in the name of all
absurdity led him to such a choice?" And what a number of vapid and
tasteless jokes would it provoke! "Such snobbery as it all is," cried
he, as he walked the room angrily; "as if there was any poetry in cotton
bales, or anything romantic in molasses, and yet I might engage in these
without reproach, without ridicule. I think I ought to be above such
considerations. I do think my good blood might serve to assure me
that in whatever I do honorably, honestly, and avowedly there is no
derogation."

But the snobbery was stronger than he wotted of; for, do what he would,
he could not frame the sentence in which he should write the tidings to
Alice, and yet he felt that there would be a degree of meanness in the
non-avowal infinitely more intolerable.

While he thus chafed and fretted, he heard a quick step mounting the
stair, and at the same instant his door was flung open, and Skeffy
Darner rushed towards him and grasped both his hands.

"Well, old Tony, y