d what can I do for you?"

"Well, Uncle Reginald, you can do a great deal for me if you will. Of
course you've heard of all those rows of mine?"

"I have heard something."

"Everybody has heard," said Tom, mournfully. "I don't suppose anybody
was ever knocked so much about as I've been for the last six months."

"I'm sorry for that, Tom."

"I'm sure you are, because you're always good-natured. Now I wonder
if you will do a great thing to oblige me."

"Let us hear what it is," said Uncle Reginald.

"I suppose you know that there is only one thing in the world that I
want." Mr. Dosett thought that it would be discreet to make no reply
to this, but, turning his chair partly round, he prepared to listen
very attentively to what his nephew might have to say to him. "All
this about the policeman and the rest of it has simply come from my
being so unhappy about Ayala."

"It wouldn't be taken as a promise of your being a good husband, Tom,
when you get into such a mess as that."

"That's because people don't understand," said Tom. "It is because I
am so earnest about it, and because I can't bear the disappointment!
There isn't one at Travers and Treason who doesn't know that if I'd
married Ayala I should have settled down as quiet a young man as
there is in all London. You ask the governor else himself. As long as
I thought there was any hope I used to be there steady as a rock at
half-past nine. Everybody knew it. So I should again, if she'd only
come round."

"You can't make a lady come round, as you call it."

"Not make her; no. Of course you can't make a girl. But persuading
goes a long way. Why shouldn't she have me? As to all these rows, she
ought to feel at any rate that they're her doing. And what she's done
it stands to reason she could undo if she would. It only wants a word
from her to put me all right with the governor,--and to put me all
right with Travers and Treason too. Nobody can love her as I do."

"I do believe that nobody could love her better," said Mr. Dosett,
who was beginning to be melted by his nephew's earnestness.

"Oughtn't that to go for something? And then she would have
everything that she wishes. She might live anywhere she pleased,--so
that I might go to the office every day. She would have her own
carriage, you know."

"I don't think that would matter much with Ayala."

"It shows that I'm in a position to ask her," said Tom. "If she could
only bring herself not to hate me--"