"My advice to you is to put your head under the pump if there is one, and under the tap if there isn't, and let the water run for a good half-hour, for a complaint like yours it's the best medicine you can possibly have". It seemed that Mr. Cottrell was so taken aback by the proffer of this very handsome advice that for a moment or two he was at a loss for a retort; before he found one his mistress had interposed. "Luker, come up here!" Mr. Luker looked at the lady at the head of the staircase, at Mr. Cottrell, at the invisible persons who still remained without. He seemed to hesitate, as if in doubt whether or not to take a hand in the game just where he was; then, arriving at a sudden resolution, he did as the lady requested: he went upstairs, followed by the retort which Mr. Cottrell had found at last. "Perhaps if you were to try a little of that medicine you recommend on your own account it mightn't do you any harm." The observation went unheeded. Mr. Luker was captured by the lady the moment he reached the topmost stair. She pointed to the flight in front. "Up you go!" Up he went, with her at his heels. On the next landing she called his attention to the open bedroom door. "In you go." Perceiving what the apartment was he favoured her with what he perhaps meant for a whimsical glance, and in he went. "Go straight through into the next room--that's my boudoir." He went straight through, and she also. Closing the door of her bedroom she stood with her back to it, putting to him a question almost as if she were aiming a pistol at his head. "Have you brought that money?" Mr. Luker did not at once give her the answer she so imperatively demanded. Instead, holding his ancient top-hat in front of him as if it were some precious possession, he ventured on a remark of his own. "Things seem a little at sixes and sevens; they almost suggest that domestic relations are a trifle strained. That man who calls himself a butler is not behaving as if he were a butler; and I regret to notice something about the establishment which one hardly expects to find in a lady's high-class mansion." "Cottrell's going--at once. All the servants are going--lot of drunken brutes! I'm only waiting for the money to pay them their wages." "Oh, I see. And--those other persons on the doorstep, do they want money also?" "I don't know who's there, and I don't care; but I daresay every one wants money. I do! Did you hear me ask if you've brought that money I told you to bring?" "To what money are you alluding?" "You know very well! None of your fooling! Have you brought that ten thousand pounds?" "Ten thousand pounds!" He held up his hands, with his top-hat between them. "Ten thousand pounds! She speaks of that great sum as if it were a mere nothing!" "Have you brought it?" "I certainly have not." "Then what have you brought?" "I have brought--nothing."