The gentleman sent for turned up slowly, and came in with reluctance, keeping his face as much as possible averted. He was, however, too easily recognisable to make this contrivance available. “Why, Hesketh, have you taken service with Fortnum and Mason?” the doctor cried. “I’m in a trade protection office, sir,” said Hesketh. “I collect bills for parties.” He spoke with his eyes fixed on a distant corner, avoiding as much as possible every glance. “In a trade protection office? And you mean to tell me that Fortnum and Mason, before even the season is over, collect their bills in this way?” “They don’t have not to say so many customers in Bloomsbury, sir,” said the young man, with that quickly-conceived impudence which is so powerful a weapon, and so congenial to his race. “Confound their insolence! I have a good mind to go myself and give them a bit of my mind,” cried Dr. Roland. “Bloomsbury has more sense, it seems, than I gave it credit for, and your pampered tradesman more impudence.” “I would just do that,” said Miss Bethune. “And will it be long since you took to this trade protection, young man?--for Gilchrist brought me word you were ill in your bed not a week ago.” “A man can’t stay in bed, when ’e has a wife to support, and with no ’ealth to speak of,” Hesketh replied, with a little bravado; but he was very pale, and wiped the unwholesome dews from his forehead. “Anæmia, body and soul,” said the doctor to the lady, in an undertone. “You’ll come to his grandfather again in a moment,” said the lady to the doctor. “Now, my lad, you shall just listen to me. Put down this moment your trade protections, and all your devices. Did you not hear, by Gilchrist, that we were meaning to give you a new chance? Not for your sake, but for your wife’s, though she probably is just tarred with the same stick. We were meaning to set you up in a little shop in a quiet suburb.” Here the young fellow made a grimace, but recollected himself, and said no word. “Eh!” cried Miss Bethune, “that wouldn’t serve your purposes, my fine gentleman?” “I never said so,” said the young man. “It’s awfully kind of you. Still, as I’ve got a place on my own hook, as it were--not that we mightn’t combine the two, my wife and I. She ain’t a bad saleswoman,” he added, with condescension. “We was in the same house of business before we was married--not that beastly old shop where they do nothing but take away the young gentlemen’s and young ladies’ characters. It’s as true as life what I say. Ask any one that has ever been there.” “Anæmia,” said Miss Bethune, to the doctor, aside, “would not be proof enough, if there were facts on the other hand.” “I always mistrust facts,” the doctor replied.