This had been very galling to Pod, especially when said before his schoolmates; and now, to-day, he had given Mr. Hammond an opportunity of sneering at him for the second time. This Mr. Hammond was Matthew Kelvin's one articled pupil. Attracted by Pod's shrewdness, and keen common sense, he had "taken him in hand," as he himself phrased it; although whether such taking in hand would ultimately prove beneficial to Pod, seemed somewhat doubtful at present. Mr. Hammond found Pod useful as a go-between in his love-affairs. He was engaged to a young lady against the wishes of her friends. Any letters sent by him through the post were intercepted, and it was only by trusting to Pod's skill and diplomacy as a messenger that he could contrive to communicate with her at all. In such a case as this, Pod might be trusted implicitly, and Hammond knew it. He was rewarded chiefly with cigars, and now and then with an odd half-crown, or a pair of soiled lavender kid gloves; which latter articles, when cleaned, looked almost as good as new, and although somewhat large, created quite a sensation among Pod's friends and acquaintances, when worn by him on his evening stroll along the Ladies' Walk. Then Mr. Hammond had made Pod a present of an old silver-mounted meerschaum, which, although he found it somewhat full-flavoured at present, he would doubtless be able to smoke with comfort when he should have practised on it for five or six months longer. But far beyond any pecuniary reward was to be counted the happiness of being in Mr. Hammond's confidence, and the inestimable boon of his society. Since Mr. Hammond had taken him by the hand, Pod felt himself to be quite a different sort of person--he had, as it were, emerged from the grub into the butterfly. The world and he were on altogether different terms from what they had been on twelve months ago. A year ago, for instance, he would not have thought of wearing a chimney-pot hat, or of wearing stand-up paper collars of the same shape as Mr. Hammond's, or of carrying a slim silk umbrella to and from business. To be sure, the umbrella, however elegant and even useful it might seem when folded tightly up, was in reality so worn and dilapidated as to be quite incapable of being opened; but as this was a secret known to Pod alone, it did not matter greatly. Then it was surely a brilliant stroke of inventiveness to allow himself to be seldom seen in the town without a _Times_ newspaper under his arm--generally three or four days old; but that was of no consequence. To be so seen seemed to add a foot to his stature, and it is impossible to say how much to his consequence.