On leaving the office, the happy thought had occurred to Fanny of telegraphing at once to her father apprising him of Charles Bevan's decision. Accordingly they sought the nearest telegraph office, where Miss Lambert indited the following despatch:—

    "To Lambert,
     c/o Miss Pursehouse,
     The Roost, Rookhurst.

    "Mr Bevan has stopped the action. Isn't it sweet of him?"

[Pg 160]

"Any name?" asked the clerk.

"Oh yes," replied Fanny, suddenly remembering that her connection with the matter ought to be kept dark. "Put Hancock."

Then they sought Oxford Street, where Fanny remembered that she had some shopping to do.

"I won't be a minute," she said, pausing before a draper's. "Will you come in, or wait outside?"

Mr Hancock elected to wait outside, and he waited.

It was an unfortunate shop for a man to wait before: there was nothing in the windows but lingerie; the shop on the left of it was a bonnet shop, and the establishment on the right was a bar.

So he had to wait, standing on the kerbstone, in full view of mankind. In two minutes three men passed who knew him, and in the middle of the fourth minute old Sir Henry Tempest, one of his best clients, who was driving by in a hansom, stopped, got out and button-holed him.

"Just the man I want to see, what a piece of luck! I was going to your office. See here,[Pg 161] that d——d scamp of a Sawyer has sent me in a bill for sixteen pounds—sixteen pounds for those repairs I spoke to you about. Why! I'd have got 'em done for six if he had left them to me. But jump into the cab, and come and have luncheon, and we can talk things over."

"I can't," said Mr Hancock, "I am waiting for a lady—my sister, she has just gone into that shop. I'll tell you, I will see you, any time you like, to-morrow."

"Well, I suppose that must do. But sixteen pounds!—people seem to think I am made of money. I tell you what, Hancock, the great art in getting through life is to make yourself out a poor man—go about in an old coat and hat; you are just as comfortable, and you are not pestered by every beggar and beast that wants money."

"Decidedly, decidedly—I think you are right," said his listener, standing now on one foot, now on the other.

"Once you get the reputation of being rich you are ruined—what's the matter with you?"

"Twinges of gout, twinges of gout. I can't get rid of it."

"Gout? Have you been to a doctor for it?"

[Pg 162]

"Yes."

"Well, don't mind what he says; try my remedy. Gout, my dear sir, is incurable with drugs, I've tried 'em. You try hot air baths and vegetarianism; it cured me. I don't say a strictly vegetarian diet, but just as little meat as you can take. I get it myself. Hancock, we're not so young as we were, and the wine and women of our youth revisit us; yes, the wine and women——"

He stopped. Fanny had just emerged from the shop.

The cabman who drove Sir Henry Tempest that day from Oxford Street to the Raleigh Club has not yet solved the problem as to "what the old gent, was laughing about."

"I'm awfully sorry to have kept you such a time," said Fanny, as they wandered away, "but those shopmen are so stupid. Who was that nice-looking old gentleman you were talking to?"

"That was Sir Henry Tempest; but he never struck me as being especially nice-looking. He is not a bad man in his way—but a bore; yes, very decidedly a bore."

"Come here," said Fanny, from whose facile mind the charms of Sir Henry Tempest had[Pg 163] vanished—"Come here, and I will buy you something." She turned to a jeweller's shop.

"But, my dear child," said James, "I never wear jewellery—never."

"Oh, I don't mean really to buy you something, I only mean make belief—window-shopping, you know. I often go out by myself and buy heaps of things like that, watches and carriages, and all sorts of things. I enjoy it just as much as if I were buying them really; more, I think, for I don't get tired of them. Do you know that when I want a thing and get it I don't want it any more? I often get married like that."

"Like what?" asked the astonished Mr Hancock.

"Window-shopping. I see sometimes such a nice-looking man in the street or the park, then I marry him and he's ever so nice; but if I married him really I'm sure I'd hate him, or at least be tired of him in a day or two. Now, see here! I will buy you—let me see—let me see—that!" She pointed suddenly to an atrocious carbuncle scarf-pin. "That, and that watch with the long hand that goes hopping round. You can have the whole window," said Fanny, suddenly becoming[Pg 164] lavishly generous. "But the scarf-pin would suit you, and the watch would be useful for—for—well, it looks like a business man's watch."

Mr Hancock sighed. "Say an old man's watch, Fanny—may I call you Fanny?"

"Of course, if you like. But you're not old, you're quite young; at least you're just as jolly as if you were. But come, or we will be late for the Zoo."

"Wait," said Mr Hancock; "there is lots of time for the ............