Chapter II: Part 2

"Don't know what 'e would be like if 'e 'appened to fancy 'imself something really dangerous," answered Mrs. Postwhistle. "I am a bit nervous of this new monkey game, I don't mind confessing to you--the things that they do according to the picture-books. Up to now, except for imagining 'imself a mole, and taking all his meals underneath the carpet, it's been mostly birds and cats and 'armless sort o' things I 'aven't seemed to mind so much."

"How did you get hold of him?" demanded Mr. Clodd. "Have much trouble in finding him, or did somebody come and tell you about him?"

"Old Gladman, of Chancery Lane, the law stationer, brought 'im 'ere one evening about two months ago--said 'e was a sort of distant relative of 'is, a bit soft in the 'ead, but perfectly 'armless--wanted to put 'im with someone who wouldn't impose on 'im. Well, what between 'aving been empty for over five weeks, the poor old gaby 'imself looking as gentle as a lamb, and the figure being reasonable, I rather jumped at the idea; and old Gladman, explaining as 'ow 'e wanted the thing settled and done with, got me to sign a letter."

"Kept a copy of it?" asked the business-like Clodd.

"No. But I can remember what it was. Gladman 'ad it all ready. So long as the money was paid punctual and 'e didn't make no disturbance and didn't fall sick, I was to go on boarding and lodging 'im for seventeen- and-sixpence a week. It didn't strike me as anything to be objected to at the time; but 'e payin' regular, as I've explained to you, and be'aving, so far as disturbance is concerned, more like a Christian martyr than a man, well, it looks to me as if I'd got to live and die with 'im."

"Give him rope, and possibly he'll have a week at being a howling hyaena, or a laughing jackass, or something of that sort that will lead to a disturbance," thought Mr. Clodd, "in which case, of course, you would have your remedy."

"Yes," thought Mrs. Postwhistle, "and possibly also 'e may take it into what 'e calls is 'ead to be a tiger or a bull, and then perhaps before 'e's through with it I'll be beyond the reach of remedies."

"Leave it to me," said Mr. Clodd, rising and searching for his hat. "I know old Gladman; I'll have a talk with him."

"You might get a look at that letter if you can," suggested Mrs. Postwhistle, "and tell me what you think about it. I don't want to spend the rest of my days in a lunatic asylum of my own if I can 'elp it."

"You leave it to me," was Mr. Clodd's parting assurance.

The July moon had thrown a silver veil over the grimness of Rolls Court when, five hours later, Mr. Clodd's nailed boots echoed again upon its uneven pavement; but Mr. Clodd had no eye for moon or stars or such-like; always he had things more important to think of.

"Seen the old 'umbug?" asked Mrs. Postwhistle, who was partial to the air, leading the way into the parlour.

"First and foremost commenced," Mr. Clodd, as he laid aside his hat, "it is quite understood that you really do want to get rid of him? What's that?" demanded Mr. Clodd, a heavy thud upon the floor above having caused him to start out of his chair.

"'E came in an hour after you'd gone," explained Mrs. Postwhistle, "bringing with him a curtain pole as 'e'd picked up for a shilling in Clare Market. 'E's rested one end upon the mantelpiece and tied the other to the back of the easy-chair--'is idea is to twine 'imself round it and go to sleep upon it. Yes, you've got it quite right without a single blunder. I do want to get rid of 'im."

"Then," said Mr. Clodd, reseating himself, "it can be done."

"Thank God for that!" was Mrs. Postwhistle's pious ejaculation.

"It is just as I thought," continued Mr. Clodd. "The old innocent--he's Gladman's brother-in-law, by the way--has got a small annuity. I couldn't get the actual figure, but I guess it's about sufficient to pay for his keep and leave old Gladman, who is running him, a very decent profit. They don't want to send him to an asylum. They can't say he's a pauper, and to put him into a private establishment would swallow up, most likely, the whole of his income. On the other hand, they don't want the bother of looking after him themselves. I talked pretty straight to the old man--let him see I understood the business; and--well, to cut a long story short, I'm willing to take on the job, provided you really want to have done with it, and Gladman is willing in that case to let you off your contract."

Mrs. Postwhistle went to the cupboard to get Mr. Clodd a drink. Another thud upon the floor above--one suggestive of exceptional velocity--arrived at the precise moment when Mrs. Postwhistle, the tumbler level with her eye, was in the act of measuring.

"I call this making a disturbance," said Mrs. Postwhistle, regarding the broken fragments.

"It's only for another night," comforted her Mr. Clodd. "I'll take him away some time to-morrow. Meanwhile, if I were you, I should spread a mattress underneath that perch of his before I went to bed. I should like him handed over to me in reasonable repair."

"It will deaden the sound a bit, any'ow," agreed Mrs. Postwhistle.

"Success to temperance," drank Mr. Clodd, and rose to go.

"I take it you've fixed things up all right for yourself," said Mrs. Postwhistle; "and nobody can blame you if you 'ave. 'Eaven bless you, is what I say."

"We shall get on together," prophesied Mr. Clodd. "I'm fond of animals."

Early the next morning a four-wheeled cab drew up at the entrance to Rolls Court, and in it and upon it went away Clodd and Clodd's Lunatic (as afterwards he came to be known), together with all the belongings of Clodd's Lunatic, the curtain-pole included; and there appeared again behind the fanlight of the little grocer's shop the intimation: "Lodgings for a Single Man," which caught the eye a few days later of a weird-looking, lanky, rawboned laddie, whose language Mrs. Postwhistle found difficulty for a time in comprehending; and that is why one sometimes meets to-day worshippers of Kail Yard literature wandering disconsolately about St. Dunstan-in-the-West, seeking Rolls Court, discomforted because it is no more. But that is the history of the "Wee Laddie," and this of the beginnings of William Clodd, now Sir William Clodd, Bart., M.P., proprietor of a quarter of a hundred newspapers, magazines, and journals: "Truthful Billy" we called him then.

No one can say of Clodd that he did not deserve whatever profit his unlicensed lunatic asylum may have brought him. A kindly man was William Clodd when indulgence in sentiment did not interfere with business.

"There's no harm in him," asserted Mr. Clodd, talking the matter over with one Mr. Peter Hope, journalist, of Gough Square. "He's just a bit dotty, same as you or I might get with nothing to do and all day long to do it in. Kid's play, that's all it is. The best plan, I find, is to treat it as a game and take a hand in it. Last week he wanted to be a lion. I could see that was going to be awkward, he roaring for raw meat and thinking to prowl about the house at night. Well, I didn't nag him--that's no good. I just got a gun and shot him. He's a duck now, and I'm trying to keep him one: sits for an hour beside his bath on three china eggs I've bought him. Wish some of the sane ones were as little trouble."

The summer came again. Clodd and his Lunatic, a mild-looking little old gentleman of somewhat clerical cut, one often met with arm-in-arm, bustling about the streets and courts that were the scene of Clodd's rent- collecting labours. Their evident attachment to one another was curiously displayed; Clodd, the young and red-haired, treating his white- haired, withered companion with fatherly indulgence; the other glancing up from time to time into Clodd's face with a winning expression of infantile affection.

"We are getting much better," explained Clodd, the pair meeting Peter Hope one day at the corner of Newcastle Street. "The more we are out in the open air, and the more we have to do and think about, the better for us--eh?"

The mild-looking little old gentleman hanging on Clodd's arm smiled and nodded.

"Between ourselves," added Mr. Clodd, sinking his voice, "we are not half as foolish as folks think we are."

Peter Hope went his way down the Strand.

"Clodd's a good sort--a good sort," said Peter Hope, who, having in his time lived much alone, had fallen into the habit of speaking his thoughts aloud; "but he's not the man to waste his time. I wonder."

With the winter Clodd's Lunatic fell ill.

Clodd bustled round to Chancery Lane.

"To tell you the truth," confessed Mr. Gladman, "we never thought he would live so long as he has."

"There's the annuity you've got to think of," said Clodd, whom his admirers of to-day (and they are many, for he must be a millionaire by this time) are fond of alluding to as "that frank, outspoken Englishman." "Wouldn't it be worth your while to try what taking him away from the fogs might do for him?"

Old Gladman seemed inclined to consider the question, but Mrs. Gladman, a brisk, cheerful little woman, had made up her mind.

"We've had what there is to have," said Mrs. Gladman. "He's seventy-three. What's the sense of risking good money? Be content."

No one could say--no one ever did say--that Clodd, under the circumstances, did not do his best. Perhaps, after all, nothing could have helped. The little old gentleman, at Clodd's suggestion, played at being a dormouse and lay very still. If he grew restless, thereby bringing on his cough, Clodd, as a terrible black cat, was watching to pounce upon him. Only by keeping very quiet and artfully pretending to be asleep could he hope to escape the ruthless Clodd.

Doctor William Smith (ne Wilhelm Schmidt) shrugged his fat shoulders. "We can do noding. Dese fogs of ours: id is de one ting dat enables the foreigner to crow over us. Keep him quiet. De dormouse--id is a goot idea."

That evening William Clodd mounted to the second floor of 16, Gough Square, where dwelt his friend, Peter Hope, and knocked briskly at the door.

"Come in," said a decided voice, which was not Peter Hope's.

Mr. William Clodd's ambition was, and always had been, to be the owner or part-owner of a paper. To-day, as I have said, he owns a quarter of a hundred, and is in negotiation, so rumour goes, for seven more. But twenty years ago "Clodd and Co., Limited," was but in embryo. And Peter Hope, journalist, had likewise and for many a long year cherished the ambition to be, before he died, the owner or part-owner of a paper. Peter Hope to-day owns nothing, except perhaps the knowledge, if such things be permitted, that whenever and wherever his name is mentioned, kind thoughts arise unbidden--that someone of the party will surely say: "Dear old Peter! What a good fellow he was!" Which also may be in its way a valuable possession: who knows? But twenty years ago Peter's horizon was limited by Fleet Street.

Peter Hope was forty-seven, so he said, a dreamer and a scholar. William Clodd was three-and-twenty, a born hustler, very wide awake. Meeting one day by accident upon an omnibus, when Clodd lent Peter, who had come out without his purse, threepence to pay his fare with; drifting into acquaintanceship, each had come to acquire a liking and respect for the other. The dreamer thought with wonder of Clodd's shrewd practicability; the cute young man of business was lost in admiration of what seemed to him his old friend's marvellous learning. Both had arrived at the conclusion that a weekly journal with Peter Hope as editor, and William Clodd as manager, would be bound to be successful.

"If only we could scrape together a thousand pounds!" had sighed Peter.

"The moment we lay our hands upon the coin, we'll start that paper. Remember, it's a bargain," had answered William Clodd.

Mr. William Clodd turned the handle and walked in. With the door still in his hand he paused to look round the room. It was the first time he had seen it. His meetings hitherto with Peter Hope had been chance _rencontres_ in street or restaurant. Always had he been curious to view the sanctuary of so much erudition.

A large, oak-panelled room, its three high windows, each with a low, cushioned seat beneath it, giving on to Gough Square. Thirty-five years before, Peter Hope, then a young dandy with side whiskers close-cropped and terminating just below the ear; with wavy, brown hair, giving to his fresh-complexioned face an appearance almost girlish; in cut-away blue coat, flowered waistcoat, black silk cravat secured by two gold pins chained together, and tightly strapped grey trouserings, had, aided and abetted by a fragile little lady in crinoline and much-flounced skirt, and bodice somewhat low, with corkscrew curls each movement of her head set ringing, planned and furnished it in accordance with the sober canons then in vogue, spending thereupon more than they should, as is to be expected from the young to whom the future promises all things. The fine Brussels carpet! A little too bright, had thought the shaking curls. "The colours will tone down, miss--ma'am." The shopman knew. Only by the help of the round island underneath the massive Empire table, by excursions into untrodden corners, could Peter recollect the rainbow floor his feet had pressed when he was twenty-one. The noble bookcase, surmounted by Minerva's bust. Really it was too expensive. But the nodding curls had been so obstinate. Peter's silly books and papers must be put away in order; the curls did not intend to permit any excuse for untidiness. So, too, the handsome, brass-bound desk; it must be worthy of the beautiful thoughts Peter would pen upon it. The great sideboard, supported by two such angry-looking mahogany lions; it must be strong to support the weight of silver clever Peter would one day purchase to place upon it. The few oil paintings in their heavy frames. A solidly furnished, sober apartment; about it that subtle atmosphere of dignity one finds but in old rooms long undisturbed, where one seems to read upon the walls: "I, Joy and Sorrow, twain in one, have dwelt here." One item only there was that seemed out of place among its grave surroundings--a guitar, hanging from the wall, ornamented with a ridiculous blue bow, somewhat faded.

"Mr. William Clodd?" demanded the decided voice.

Clodd started and closed the door.

"Guessed it in once," admitted Mr. Clodd.

"I thought so," said the decided voice. "We got your note this afternoon. Mr. Hope will be back at eight. Will you kindly hang up your hat and coat in the hall? You will find a box of cigars on the mantelpiece. Excuse my being busy. I must finish this, then I'll talk to you."

The owner of the decided voice went on writing. Clodd, having done as he was bid, sat himself in the easy-chair before the fire and smoked. Of the person behind the desk Mr. Clodd could see but the head and shoulders. It had black, curly hair, cut short. It's only garment visible below the white collar and red tie might have been a boy's jacket designed more like a girl's, or a girl's designed more like a boy's; partaking of the genius of English statesmanship, it appeared to be a compromise. Mr. Clodd remarked the long, drooping lashes over the bright, black eyes.

"It's a girl," said Mr. Clodd to himself; "rather a pretty girl."

Mr. Clodd, continuing downward, arrived at the nose.

"No," said Mr. Clodd to himself, "it's a boy--a cheeky young beggar, I should say."

The person at the desk, giving a grunt of satisfaction, gathered together sheets of manuscript and arranged them; then, resting its elbows on the desk and taking its head between its hands, regarded Mr. Clodd.

"Don't you hurry yourself," said Mr. Clodd; "but when you really have finished, tell me what you think of me."

"I beg your pardon," apologised the person at the desk. "I have got into a habit of staring at people. I know it's rude. I'm trying to break myself of it."

"Tell me your name," suggested Mr. Clodd, "and I'll forgive you."

"Tommy," was the answer--"I mean Jane."

"Make up your mind," advised Mr. Clodd; "don't let me influence you. I only want the truth."

"You see," explained the person at the desk, "everybody calls me Tommy, because that used to be my name. But now it's Jane."

"I see," said Mr. Clodd. "And which am I to call you?"

The person at the desk pondered. "Well, if this scheme you and Mr. Hope have been talking about really comes to anything, we shall be a good deal thrown together, you see, and then I expect you'll call me Tommy--most people do."

"You've heard about the scheme? Mr. Hope has told you?"

"Why, of course," replied Tommy. "I'm Mr. Hope's devil."

For the moment Clodd doubted whether his old friend had not started a rival establishment to his own.

"I help him in his work," Tommy relieved his mind by explaining. "In journalistic circles we call it devilling."

"I understand," said Mr. Clodd. "And what do you think, Tommy, of the scheme? I may as well start calling you Tommy, because, between you and me, I think the idea will come to something."

Tommy fixed her black eyes upon him. She seemed to be looking him right through.

"You are staring again, Tommy," Clodd reminded her. "You'll have trouble breaking yourself of that habit, I can see."

"I was trying to make up my mind about you. Everything depends upon the business man."

"Glad to hear you say so," replied the self-satisfied Clodd.

"If you are very clever--Do you mind coming nearer to the lamp? I can't quite see you over there."

Clodd never could understand why he did it--never could understand why, from first to last, he always did what Tommy wished him to do; his only consolation being that other folks seemed just as helpless. He rose and, crossing the long room, stood at attention before the large desk, nervousness, to which he was somewhat of a stranger, taking possession of him.

"You don't _look_ very clever."

Clodd experienced another new sensation--that of falling in his own estimation.

"And yet one can see that you _are_ clever."

The mercury of Clodd's conceit shot upward to a point that in the case of anyone less physically robust might have been dangerous to health.

Clodd held out his hand. "We'll pull it through, Tommy. The Guv'nor shall find the literature; you and I will make it go. I like you."

And Peter Hope, entering at the moment, caught a spark from the light that shone in the eyes of William Clodd and Tommy, whose other name was Jane, as, gripping hands, they stood with the desk between them, laughing they knew not why. And the years fell from old Peter, and, again a boy, he also laughed he knew not why. He had sipped from the wine-cup of youth.

"It's all settled, Guv'nor!" cried Clodd. "Tommy and I have fixed things up. We'll start with the New Year."

"You've got the money?"

"I'm reckoning on it. I don't see very well how I can miss it."

"Sufficient?"

"Just about. You get to work."

"I've saved a little," began Peter. "It ought to have been more, but somehow it isn't."

"Perhaps we shall want it," Clodd replied; "perhaps we shan't. You are supplying the brains."

The three for a few moments remained silent.

"I think, Tommy," said Peter, "I think a bottle of the old Madeira--"

"Not to-night," said Clodd; "next time."

"To drink success," urged Peter.

"One man's success generally means some other poor devil's misfortune," answered Clodd.

"Can't be helped, of course, but don't want to think about it to-night. Must be getting back to my dormouse. Good night."

Clodd shook hands and bustled out.

"I thought as much," mused Peter aloud.

"What an odd mixture the man is! Kind--no one could have been kinder to the poor old fellow. Yet all the while--We are an odd mixture, Tommy," said Peter Hope, "an odd mixture, we men and women." Peter was a philosopher.

The white-whiskered old dormouse soon coughed himself to sleep for ever.

"I shall want you and the missis to come to the funeral, Gladman," said Mr. Clodd, as he swung into the stationer's shop; "and bring Pincer with you. I'm writing to him."

"Don't see what good we can do," demurred Gladman.

"Well, you three are his only relatives; it's only decent you should be present," urged Clodd. "Besides, there's the will to be read. You may care to hear it."

The dry old law stationer opened wide his watery eyes.

"His will! Why, what had he got to leave? There was nothing but the annuity."

"You turn up at the funeral," Clodd told him, "and you'll learn all about it. Bonner's clerk will be there and will bring it with him. Everything is going to be done _comme il faut_, as the French say."

"I ought to have known of this," began Mr. Gladman.

"Glad to find you taking so much interest in the old chap," said Clodd. "Pity he's dead and can't thank you."

"I warn you," shouted old Gladman, whose voice was rising to a scream, "he was a helpless imbecile, incapable of acting for himself! If any undue influence--"

"See you on Friday," broke in Clodd, who was busy.

Friday's ceremony was not a sociable affair. Mrs. Gladman spoke occasionally in a shrill whisper to Mr. Gladman, who replied with grunts. Both employed the remainder of their time in scowling at Clodd. Mr. Pincer, a stout, heavy gentleman connected with the House of Commons, maintained a ministerial reserve. The undertaker's foreman expressed himself as thankful when it was over. He criticised it as the humpiest funeral he had ever known; for a time he had serious thoughts of changing his profession.

The solicitor's clerk was waiting for the party on its return from Kensal Green. Clodd again offered hospitality. Mr. Pincer this time allowed himself a glass of weak whisky-and-water, and sipped it with an air of doing so without prejudice. The clerk had one a little stronger, Mrs. Gladman, dispensing with consultation, declined shrilly for self and partner. Clodd, explaining that he always followed legal precedent, mixed himself one also and drank "To our next happy meeting." Then the clerk read.

It was a short and simple will, dated the previous August. It appeared that the old gentleman, unknown to his relatives, had died possessed of shares in a silver mine, once despaired of, now prospering. Taking them at present value, they would produce a sum well over two thousand pounds. The old gentleman had bequeathed five hundred pounds to his brother-in- law, Mr. Gladman; five hundred pounds to his only other living relative, his first cousin, Mr. Pincer; the residue to his friend, William Clodd, as a return for the many kindnesses that gentleman had shown him.

Mr. Gladman rose, more amused than angry.

"And you think you are going to pocket that one thousand to twelve hundred pounds. You really do?" he asked Mr. Clodd, who, with legs stretched out before him, sat with his hands deep in his trousers pockets.

"That's the idea," admitted Mr. Clodd.

Mr. Gladman laughed, but without much lightening the atmosphere. "Upon my word, Clodd, you amuse me--you quite amuse me," repeated Mr. Gladman.

"You always had a sense of humour," commented Mr. Clodd.

"You villain! You double-dyed villain!" screamed Mr. Gladman, suddenly changing his tone. "You think the law is going to allow you to swindle honest men! You think we are going to sit still for you to rob us! That will--" Mr. Gladman pointed a lank forefinger dramatically towards the table.

"You mean to dispute it?" inquired Mr. Clodd.

For a moment Mr. Gladman stood aghast at the other's coolness, but soon found his voice again.

"Dispute it!" he shrieked. "Do you dispute that you influenced him?--dictated it to him word for word, made the poor old helpless idiot sign it, he utterly incapable of even understanding--"

"Don't chatter so much," interrupted Mr. Clodd. "It's not a pretty voice, yours. What I asked you was, do you intend to dispute it?"

"If you will kindly excuse us," struck in Mrs. Gladman, addressing Mr. Clodd with an air of much politeness, "we shall just have time, if we go now, to catch our solicitor before he leaves his office."

Mr. Gladman took up his hat from underneath his chair.

"One moment," suggested Mr. Clodd. "I did influence him to make that will. If you don't like it, there's an end of it."

"Of course," commenced Mr. Gladman in a mollified tone.

"Sit down," suggested Mr. Clodd. "Let's try another one." Mr. Clodd turned to the clerk. "The previous one, Mr. Wright, if you please; the one dated June the 10th."

An equally short and simple document, it bequeathed three hundred pounds to Mr. William Clodd in acknowledgment of kindnesses received, the residue to the Royal Zoological Society of London, the deceased having been always interested in and fond of animals. The relatives, "Who have never shown me the slightest affection or given themselves the slightest trouble concerning me, and who have already received considerable sums out of my income," being by name excluded.

"I may mention," observed Mr. Clodd, no one else appearing inclined to break the silence, "that in suggesting the Royal Zoological Society to my poor old friend as a fitting object for his benevolence, I had in mind a very similar case that occurred five years ago. A bequest to them was disputed on the grounds that the testator was of unsound mind. They had to take their case to the House of Lords before they finally won it."

"Anyhow," remarked Mr. Gladman, licking his lips, which were dry, "you won't get anything, Mr. Clodd--no, not even your three-hundred pounds, clever as you think yourself. My brother-in-law's money will go to the lawyers."

Then Mr. Pincer rose and spoke slowly and clearly. "If there must be a lunatic connected with our family, which I don't see why there should be, it seems to me to be you, Nathaniel Gladman."

Mr. Gladman stared back with open mouth. Mr. Pincer went on impressively.

"As for my poor old cousin Joe, he had his eccentricities, but that was all. I for one am prepared to swear that he was of sound mind in August last and quite capable of making his own will. It seems to me that the other thing, dated in June, is just waste paper."

Mr. Pincer having delivered himself, sat down again. Mr. Gladman showed signs of returning language.

"Oh! what's the use of quarrelling?" chirped in cheery Mrs. Gladman. "It's five hundred pounds we never expected. Live and let live is what I always say."

"It's the damned artfulness of the thing," said Mr. Gladman, still very white about the gills.

"Oh, you have a little something to thaw your face," suggested his wife.

Mr. and Mrs. Gladman, on the strength of the five hundred pounds, went home in a cab. Mr. Pincer stayed behind and made a night of it with Mr. Clodd and Bonner's clerk, at Clodd's expense.

The residue worked out at eleven hundred and sixty-nine pounds and a few shillings. The capital of the new company, "established for the purpose of carrying on the business of newspaper publishers and distributors, printers, advertising agents, and any other trade and enterprise affiliated to the same," was one thousand pounds in one pound shares, fully paid up; of which William Clodd, Esquire, was registered proprietor of four hundred and sixty-three; Peter Hope, M.A., of 16, Gough Square, of also four hundred and sixty-three; Miss Jane Hope, adopted daughter of said Peter Hope (her real name nobody, herself included, ever having known), and generally called Tommy, of three, paid for by herself after a battle royal with William Clodd; Mrs. Postwhistle, of Rolls Court, of ten, presented by the promoter; Mr. Pincer, of the House of Commons, also of ten (still owing for); Dr. Smith (ne Schmidt) of fifty; James Douglas Alexander Calder McTear (otherwise the "Wee Laddie"), residing then in Mrs. Postwhistle's first floor front, of one, paid for by poem published in the first number: "The Song of the Pen."

Choosing a title for the paper cost much thought. Driven to despair, they called it _Good Humour_.

STORY THE THIRD--Grindley Junior drops into the Position of Publisher

Few are the ways of the West Central district that have changed less within the last half-century than Nevill's Court, leading from Great New Street into Fetter Lane. Its north side still consists of the same quaint row of small low shops that stood there--doing perhaps a little brisker business--when George the Fourth was King; its southern side of the same three substantial houses each behind a strip of garden, pleasant by contrast with surrounding grimness, built long ago--some say before Queen Anne was dead.

Out of the largest of these, passing through the garden, then well cared for, came one sunny Sunday morning, some fifteen years before the commencement proper of this story, one Solomon Appleyard, pushing in front of him a perambulator. At the brick wall surmounted by wooden railings that divides the garden from the court, Solomon paused, hearing behind him the voice of Mrs. Appleyard speaking from the doorstep.

"If I don't see you again until dinner-time, I'll try and get on without you, understand. Don't think of nothing but your pipe and forget the child. And be careful of the crossings."

Mrs. Appleyard retired into the darkness. Solomon, steering the perambulator carefully, emerged from Nevill's Court without accident. The quiet streets drew Solomon westward. A vacant seat beneath the shade overlooking the Long Water in Kensington Gardens invited to rest.

"Piper?" suggested a small boy to Solomon. "_Sunday Times_, _'Server_?"

"My boy," said Mr. Appleyard, speaking slowly, "when you've been mewed up with newspapers eighteen hours a day for six days a week, you can do without 'em for a morning. Take 'em away. I want to forget the smell of 'em."

Solomon, having assured himself that the party in the perambulator was still breathing, crossed his legs and lit his pipe.

"Hezekiah!"

The exclamation had been wrung from Solomon Appleyard by the approach of a stout, short man clad in a remarkably ill-fitting broad-cloth suit.

"What, Sol, my boy?"

"It looked like you," said Solomon. "And then I said to myself: 'No; surely it can't be Hezekiah; he'll be at chapel.'"

"You run about," said Hezekiah, addressing a youth of some four summers he had been leading by the hand. "Don't you go out of my sight; and whatever you do, don't you do injury to those new clothes of yours, or you'll wish you'd never been put into them. The truth is," continued Hezekiah to his friend, his sole surviving son and heir being out of earshot, "the morning tempted me. 'Tain't often I get a bit of fresh air."

"Doing well?"

"The business," replied Hezekiah, "is going up by leaps and bounds--leaps and bounds. But, of course, all that means harder work for me. It's from six in the morning till twelve o'clock at night."

"There's nothing I know of," returned Solomon, who was something of a pessimist, "that's given away free gratis for nothing except misfortune."

"Keeping yourself up to the mark ain't too easy," continued Hezekiah; "and when it comes to other folks! play's all they think of. Talk religion to them--why, they laugh at you! What the world's coming to, I don't know. How's the printing business doing?"

"The printing business," responded the other, removing his pipe and speaking somewhat sadly, "the printing business looks like being a big thing. Capital, of course, is what hampers me--or, rather, the want of it. But Janet, she's careful; she don't waste much, Janet don't."

"Now, with Anne," replied Hezekiah, "it's all the other way--pleasure, gaiety, a day at Rosherville or the Crystal Palace--anything to waste money."

"Ah! she was always fond of her bit of fun," remembered Solomon.

"Fun!" retorted Hezekiah. "I like a bit of fun myself. But not if you've got to pay for it. Where's the fun in that?"

"What I ask myself sometimes," said Solomon, looking straight in front of him, "is what do we do it for?"

"What do we do what for?"

"Work like blessed slaves, depriving ourselves of all enjoyments. What's the sense of it? What--"

A voice from the perambulator beside him broke the thread of Solomon Appleyard's discourse. The sole surviving son of Hezekiah Grindley, seeking distraction and finding none, had crept back unperceived. A perambulator! A thing his experience told him out of which excitement in some form or another could generally be obtained. You worried it and took your chance. Either it howled, in which case you had to run for your life, followed--and, unfortunately, overtaken nine times out of ten--by a whirlwind of vengeance; or it gurgled: in which case the heavens smiled and halos descended on your head. In either event you escaped the deadly ennui that is the result of continuous virtue. Master Grindley, his star having pointed out to him a peacock's feather lying on the ground, had, with one eye upon his unobservant parent, removed the complicated coverings sheltering Miss Helvetia Appleyard from the world, and anticipating by a quarter of a century the prime enjoyment of British youth, had set to work to tickle that lady on the nose. Miss Helvetia Appleyard awakened, did precisely what the tickled British maiden of to- day may be relied upon to do under corresponding circumstances: she first of all took swift and comprehensive survey of the male thing behind the feather. Had he been displeasing in her eyes, she would, one may rely upon it, have anteceded the behaviour in similar case of her descendant of to-day--that is to say, have expressed resentment in no uncertain terms. Master Nathaniel Grindley proving, however, to her taste, that which might have been considered impertinence became accepted as a fit and proper form of introduction. Miss Appleyard smiled graciously--nay, further, intimated desire for more.

"That your only one?" asked the paternal Grindley.

"She's the only one," replied Solomon, speaking in tones less pessimistic.

Miss Appleyard had with the help of Grindley junior wriggled herself into a sitting posture. Grindley junior continued his attentions, the lady indicating by signs the various points at which she was most susceptible.

"Pretty picture they make together, eh?" suggested Hezekiah in a whisper to his friend.

"Never saw her take to anyone like that before," returned Solomon, likewise in a whisper.

A neighbouring church clock chimed twelve. Solomon Appleyard, knocking the ashes from his pipe, arose.

"Don't know any reason myself why we shouldn't see a little more of one another than we do," suggested Grindley senior, shaking hands.

"Give us a look-up one Sunday afternoon," suggested Solomon. "Bring the youngster with you."

Solomon Appleyard and Hezekiah Grindley had started life within a few months of one another some five-and-thirty years before. Likewise within a few hundred yards of one another, Solomon at his father's bookselling and printing establishment on the east side of the High Street of a small Yorkshire town; Hezekiah at his father's grocery shop upon the west side, opposite. Both had married farmers' daughters. Solomon's natural bent towards gaiety Fate had corrected by directing his affections to a partner instinct with Yorkshire shrewdness; and with shrewdness go other qualities that make for success rather than for happiness. Hezekiah, had circumstances been equal, might have been his friend's rival for Janet's capable and saving hand, had not sweet-tempered, laughing Annie Glossop--directed by Providence to her moral welfare, one must presume--fallen in love with him. Between Jane's virtues and Annie's three hundred golden sovereigns Hezekiah had not hesitated a moment. Golden sovereigns were solid facts; wifely virtues, by a serious-minded and strong-willed husband, could be instilled--at all events, light-heartedness suppressed. The two men, Hezekiah urged by his own ambition, Solomon by his wife's, had arrived in London within a year of one another: Hezekiah to open a grocer's shop in Kensington, which those who should have known assured him was a hopeless neighbourhood. But Hezekiah had the instinct of the money-maker. Solomon, after looking about him, had fixed upon the roomy, substantial house in Nevill's Court as a promising foundation for a printer's business.

That was ten years ago. The two friends, scorning delights, living laborious days, had seen but little of one another. Light-hearted Annie had borne to her dour partner two children who had died. Nathaniel George, with the luck supposed to wait on number three, had lived on, and, inheriting fortunately the temperament of his mother, had brought sunshine into the gloomy rooms above the shop in High Street, Kensington. Mrs. Grindley, grown weak and fretful, had rested from her labours.

Mrs. Appleyard's guardian angel, prudent like his protege, had waited till Solomon's business was well established before despatching the stork to Nevill's Court, with a little girl. Later had sent a boy, who, not finding the close air of St. Dunstan to his liking, had found his way back again; thus passing out of this story and all others. And there remained to carry on the legend of the Grindleys and the Appleyards only Nathaniel George, now aged five, and Janet Helvetia, quite a beginner, who took lift seriously.

There are no such things as facts. Narrow-minded folk--surveyors, auctioneers, and such like--would have insisted that the garden between the old Georgian house and Nevill's Court was a strip of land one hundred and eighteen feet by ninety-two, containing a laburnum tree, six laurel bushes, and a dwarf deodora. To Nathaniel George and Janet Helvetia it was the land of Thule, "the furthest boundaries of which no man has reached." On rainy Sunday afternoons they played in the great, gloomy pressroom, where silent ogres, standing motionless, stretched out iron arms to seize them as they ran. Then just when Nathaniel George was eight, and Janet Helvetia four and a half, Hezekiah launched the celebrated "Grindley's Sauce." It added a relish to chops and steaks, transformed cold mutton into a luxury, and swelled the head of Hezekiah Grindley--which was big enough in all conscience as it was--and shrivelled up his little hard heart. The Grindleys and the Appleyards visited no more. As a sensible fellow ought to have seen for himself, so thought Hezekiah, the Sauce had altered all things. The possibility of a marriage between their children, things having remained equal, might have been a pretty fancy; but the son of the great Grindley, whose name in three-foot letters faced the world from every hoarding, would have to look higher than a printer's daughter. Solomon, a sudden and vehement convert to the principles of mediaeval feudalism, would rather see his only child, granddaughter of the author of _The History of Kettlewell_ and other works, dead and buried than married to a grocer's son, even though he might inherit a fortune made out of poisoning the public with a mixture of mustard and sour beer. It was many years before Nathaniel George and Janet Helvetia met one another again, and when they did they had forgotten one another.

* * * * *

Hezekiah S. Grindley, a short, stout, and pompous gentleman, sat under a palm in the gorgeously furnished drawing-room of his big house at Notting Hill. Mrs. Grindley, a thin, faded woman, the despair of her dressmaker, sat as near to the fire as its massive and imposing copper outworks would permit, and shivered. Grindley junior, a fair-haired, well-shaped youth, with eyes that the other sex found attractive, leant with his hands in his pockets against a scrupulously robed statue of Diana, and appeared uncomfortable.

"I'm making the money--making it hand over fist. All you'll have to do will be to spend it," Grindley senior was explaining to his son and heir.

"I'll do that all right, dad."

"I'm not so sure of it," was his father's opinion. "You've got to prove yourself worthy to spend it. Don't you think I shall be content to have slaved all these years merely to provide a brainless young idiot with the means of self-indulgence. I leave my money to somebody worthy of me. Understand, sir?--somebody worthy of me."

Mrs. Grindley commenced a sentence; Mr. Grindley turned his small eyes upon her. The sentence remained unfinished.

"You were about to say something," her husband reminded her.

Mrs. Grindley said it was nothing.

"If it is anything worth hearing--if it is anything that will assist the discussion, let's have it." Mr. Grindley waited. "If not, if you yourself do not consider it worth finishing, why have begun it?"

Mr. Grindley returned to his son and heir. "You haven't done too well at school--in fact, your school career has disappointed me."

"I know I'm not clever," Grindley junior offered as an excuse.

"Why not? Why aren't you clever?"

His son and heir was unable to explain.

"You are my son--why aren't you clever? It's laziness, sir; sheer laziness!"

"I'll try and do better at Oxford, sir--honour bright I will!"

"You had better," advised him his father; "because I warn you, your whole future depends upon it. You know me. You've got to be a credit to me, to be worthy of the name of Grindley--or the name, my boy, is all you'll have."

Old Grindley meant it, and his son knew that he meant it. The old Puritan principles and instincts were strong in the old gentleman--formed, perhaps, the better part of him. Idleness was an abomination to him; devotion to pleasure, other than the pleasure of money-making, a grievous sin in his eyes. Grindley junior fully intended to do well at Oxford, and might have succeeded. In accusing himself of lack of cleverness, he did himself an injustice. He had brains, he had energy, he had character. Our virtues can be our stumbling-blocks as well as our vices. Young Grindley had one admirable virtue that needs, above all others, careful controlling: he was amiability itself. Before the charm and sweetness of it, Oxford snobbishness went down. The Sauce, against the earnest counsel of its own advertisement, was forgotten; the pickles passed by. To escape the natural result of his popularity would have needed a stronger will than young Grindley possessed. For a time the true state of affairs was hidden from the eye of Grindley senior. To "slack" it this term, with the full determination of "swotting" it the next, is always easy; the difficulty beginning only with the new term. Possibly with luck young Grindley might have retrieved his position and covered up the traces of his folly, but for an unfortunate accident. Returning to college with some other choice spirits at two o'clock in the morning, it occurred to young Grindley that trouble might be saved all round by cutting out a pane of glass with a diamond ring and entering his rooms, which were on the ground-floor, by the window. That, in mistake for his own, he should have selected the bedroom of the College Rector was a misfortune that might have occurred to anyone who had commenced the evening on champagne and finished it on whisky. Young Grindley, having been warned already twice before, was "sent down." And then, of course, the whole history of the three wasted years came out. Old Grindley in his study chair having talked for half an hour at the top of his voice, chose, partly by reason of physical necessity, partly by reason of dormant dramatic instinct, to speak quietly and slowly.

"I'll give you one chance more, my boy, and one only. I've tried you as a gentleman--perhaps that was my mistake. Now I'll try you as a grocer."

"As a what?"

"As a grocer, sir--g-r-o-c-e-r--grocer, a man who stands behind a counter in a white apron and his shirt-sleeves; who sells tea and sugar and candied peel and such-like things to customers--old ladies, little girls; who rises at six in the morning, takes down the shutters, sweeps out the shop, cleans the windows; who has half an hour for his dinner of corned beef and bread; who puts up the shutters at ten o'clock at night, tidies up the shop, has his supper, and goes to bed, feeling his day has not been wasted. I meant to spare you. I was wrong. You shall go through the mill as I went through it. If at the end of two years you've done well with your time, learned something--learned to be a man, at all events--you can come to me and thank me."

"I'm afraid, sir," suggested Grindley junior, whose handsome face during the last few minutes had grown very white, "I might not make a very satisfactory grocer. You see, sir, I've had no experience."

"I am glad you have some sense," returned his father drily. "You are quite right. Even a grocer's business requires learning. It will cost me a little money; but it will be the last I shall ever spend upon you. For the first year you will have to be apprenticed, and I shall allow you something to live on. It shall be more than I had at your age--we'll say a pound a week. After that I shall expect you to keep yourself."

Grindley senior rose. "You need not give me your answer till the evening. You are of age. I have no control over you unless you are willing to agree. You can go my way, or you can go your own."

Young Grindley, who had inherited a good deal of his father's grit, felt very much inclined to go his own; but, hampered on the other hand by the sweetness of disposition he had inherited from his mother, was unable to withstand the argument of that lady's tears, so that evening accepted old Grindley's terms, asking only as a favour that the scene of his probation might be in some out-of-the-way neighbourhood where there would be little chance of his being met by old friends.

"I have thought of all that," answered his father. "My object isn't to humiliate you more than is necessary for your good. The shop I have already selected, on the assumption that you would submit, is as quiet and out-of-the-way as you could wish. It is in a turning off Fetter Lane, where you'll see few other people than printers and caretakers. You'll lodge with a woman, a Mrs. Postwhistle, who seems a very sensible person. She'll board you and lodge you, and every Saturday you'll receive a post-office order for six shillings, out of which you'll find yourself in clothes. You can take with you sufficient to last you for the first six months, but no more. At the end of the year you can change if you like and go to another shop, or make your own arrangements with Mrs. Postwhistle. If all is settled, you go there to-morrow. You go out of this house to-morrow in any event."

Mrs. Postwhistle was a large, placid lady of philosophic temperament. Hitherto the little grocer's shop in Rolls Court, Fetter Lane, had been easy of management by her own unaided efforts; but the neighbourhood was rapidly changing. Other grocers' shops were disappearing one by one, making way for huge blocks of buildings, where hundreds of iron presses, singing day and night, spread to the earth the song of the Mighty Pen. There were hours when the little shop could hardly accommodate its crowd of customers. Mrs. Postwhistle, of a bulk not to be moved quickly, had, after mature consideration, conquering a natural disinclination to change, decided to seek assistance.

Young Grindley, alighting from a four-wheeled cab in Fetter Lane, marched up the court, followed by a weak-kneed wastrel staggering under the weight of a small box. In the doorway of the little shop, young Grindley paused and raised his hat.

"Mrs. Postwhistle?"

The lady, from her chair behind the counter, rose slowly.

"I am Mr. Nathaniel Grindley, the new assistant."

The weak-kneed wastrel let fall the box with a thud upon the floor. Mrs. Postwhistle looked her new assistant up and down.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Postwhistle. "Well, I shouldn't 'ave felt instinctively it must be you, not if I'd 'ad to pick you out of a crowd. But if you tell me so, why, I suppose you are. Come in."

The weak-kneed wastrel, receiving to his astonishment a shilling, departed.

Grindley senior had selected wisely. Mrs. Postwhistle's theory was that although very few people in this world understood their own business, they understood it better than anyone else could understand it for them. If handsome, well-educated young gentlemen, who gave shillings to wastrels, felt they wanted to become smart and capable grocers' assistants, that was their affair. Her business was to teach them their work, and, for her own sake, to see that they did it. A month went by. Mrs. Postwhistle found her new assistant hard-working, willing, somewhat clumsy, but with a smile and a laugh that transformed mistakes, for which another would have been soundly rated, into welcome variations of the day's monotony.

"If you were the sort of woman that cared to make your fortune," said one William Clodd, an old friend of Mrs. Postwhistle's, young Grindley having descended into the cellar to grind coffee, "I'd tell you what to do. Take a bun-shop somewhere in the neighbourhood of a girls' school, and put that assistant of yours in the window. You'd do a roaring business."

"There's a mystery about 'im," said Mrs. Postwhistle.

"Know what it is?"

"If I knew what it was, I shouldn't be calling it a mystery," replied Mrs. Postwhistle, who was a stylist in her way.

"How did you get him? Win him in a raffle?"

"Jones, the agent, sent 'im to me all in a 'urry. An assistant is what I really wanted, not an apprentice; but the premium was good, and the references everything one could desire."

"Grindley, Grindley," murmured Clodd. "Any relation to the Sauce, I wonder?"

"A bit more wholesome, I should say, from the look of him," thought Mrs. Postwhistle.

The question of a post office to meet its growing need had long been under discussion by the neighbourhood. Mrs. Postwhistle was approached upon the subject. Grindley junior, eager for anything that might bring variety into his new, cramped existence, undertook to qualify himself.

Within two months the arrangements were complete. Grindley junior divided his time between dispensing groceries and despatching telegrams and letters, and was grateful for the change.

Grindley junior's mind was fixed upon the fashioning of a cornucopia to receive a quarter of a pound of moist. The customer, an extremely young lady, was seeking to hasten his operations by tapping incessantly with a penny on the counter. It did not hurry him; it only worried him. Grindley junior had not acquired facility in the fashioning of cornucopias--the vertex would invariably become unrolled at the last moment, allowing the contents to dribble out on to the floor or counter. Grindley junior was sweet-tempered as a rule, but when engaged upon the fashioning of a cornucopia, was irritable.

"Hurry up, old man!" urged the extremely young lady. "I've got another appointment in less than half an hour."

"Oh, damn the thing!" said Grindley junior, as the paper for the fourth time reverted to its original shape.

An older lady, standing behind the extremely young lady and holding a telegram-form in her hand, looked indignant.

"Temper, temper," remarked the extremely young lady in reproving tone.

The fifth time was more successful. The extremely young lady went out, commenting upon the waste of time always resulting when boys were employed to do the work of men. The older lady, a haughty person, handed across her telegram with the request that it should be sent off at once.

Grindley junior took his pencil from his pocket and commenced to count.

"_Digniori_, not _digniorus_," commented Grindley junior, correcting the word, "_datur digniori_, dative singular." Grindley junior, still irritable from the struggle with the cornucopia, spoke sharply.

The haughty lady withdrew her eyes from a spot some ten miles beyond the back of the shop, where hitherto they had been resting, and fixed them for the first time upon Grindley junior.

"Thank you," said the haughty lady.

Grindley junior looked up and immediately, to his annoyance, felt that he was blushing. Grindley junior blushed easily--it annoyed him very much.

The haughty young lady also blushed. She did not often blush; when she did, she felt angry with herself.

"A shilling and a penny," demanded Grindley junior.