plain, prose, Mr. Raikes tamed his imagination
to deliver it. He pointed distinctly at the old gentleman who gave the
supper as the writer of the letter. Evan, in return, confided to him
his history and present position, and Mr. Raikes, without cooling to his
fortunate friend, became a trifle patronizing.

'You said your father--I think I remember at old Cudford's--was a
cavalry officer, a bold dragoon?'

'I did,' replied Evan. 'I told a lie.'

'We knew it; but we feared your prowess, Harrington.'

Then they talked over the singular letter uninterruptedly, and Evan,
weak among his perplexities of position and sentiment: wanting money
for the girl up-stairs, for this distasteful comrade's bill at the Green
Dragon, and for his own immediate requirements, and with the bee buzzing
of Rose in his ears: 'She despises you,' consented in a desperation
ultimately to sign his name to it, and despatch Jack forthwith to
Messrs. Grist.

'You'll find it's an imposition,' he said, beginning less to think it
so, now that his name was put to the hated monstrous thing; which also
now fell to pricking at curiosity. For he was in the early steps of
his career, and if his lady, holding to pride, despised him--as, he was
tortured into the hypocrisy of confessing, she justly might, why, then,
unless he was the sport of a farceur, here seemed a gilding of the path
of duty: he could be serviceable to friends. His claim on fair young
Rose's love had grown in the short while so prodigiously asinine that it
was a minor matter to constitute himself an old eccentric's puppet.

'No more an imposition than it's 50 of Virgil,' quoth the rejected
usher.

'It smells of a plot,' said Evan.

'It 's the best joke that will be made in my time,' said Mr. Raikes,
rubbing his hands.

'And now listen to your luck,' said Evan; 'I wish mine were like it!'
and Jack heard of Lady Jocelyn's offer. He heard also that the young
lady he was to instruct was an heiress, and immediately inspected his
garments, and showed the sacred necessity there was for him to refit
in London, under the hands of scientific tailors. Evan wrote him an
introduction to Mr. Goren, counted out the contents of his purse (which
Jack had reduced in his study of the pastoral game of skittles, he
confessed), and calculated in a niggardly way, how far it would go
to supply the fellow's wants; sighing, as he did it, to think of Jack
installed at Beckley Court, while Jack, comparing his lu