Philip no longer found himself in sympathy with Uncle Joseph's enterprises. It was not the enterprises themselves to which he objected, for he realized that no one was a penny the worse for them, while many were considerably the better. But all the newly awakened heart of this small knight of ours rebelled against the idea of imposing upon a woman. Philip felt that Uncle Joseph must be wrong about women. They could not be what he thought them--at least, not all of them. And even if Uncle Joseph were right in his opinion, Philip felt positive of one thing, and that was that no woman, however undeserving, should ever be hardly treated or made to suffer for her own shortcomings. And to this view he held tenaciously for the whole of his life. At the present moment it caused him acute unhappiness to be compelled to sit down and pen sloppy effusions to little girls with whom he was not acquainted, asking them to be so good as to consent to become his sisters, or as an alternative send a postal order by return. But he was loyal to the hand that fed him and to the man who had been his father and his mother for the greater part of his little life. He wrote on, steadily and conscientiously, until the three letters were copied out and ready for the post. But it is impossible to do two things at once. You cannot, for instance, write begging letters and think of blue cotton frocks simultaneously. In copying out the last letter, Philip, owing to the fact that his wits were wandering on Hampstead Heath instead of directing his pen, was guilty of a clerical error. The residence of Master Thomas Smith, it may be remembered, was situated at 172 Laburnum Road, Balham, though overzealous philanthropists, bent upon a personal investigation into the sad circumstances of the Smith family, might have experienced some difficulty in piercing its disguise as a small tobacconist's shop. Now Philip, instead of writing out this address at the head of the sheet of dingy Silurian notepaper upon which T. Smith was accustomed to conduct his correspondence, absent-mindedly wrote "Holly Lodge, Hampstead, N.W."--a _lapsus calami_ which was destined to alter the whole course of his life, together with that of Uncle Joseph, besides bringing about the dissolution of an admirably conducted little business in the begging-letter line. After this he folded the letter and fastened it up in the last envelope (which, by the way, was addressed to _The Little Girl Who lives with Lady Broadhurst Plumbley Royal Hants)_,