They brought a card--the housemaid with the fan-teeth held it gingerly between black finger and blacker thumb--and it carried the name Mr. R.H. Hoffer in old Gothic letters. A hasty rush through the file of bills showed me that I owed nothing to any Mr. Hoffer, and assuming my sweetest smile, I bade Fan of the Teeth show him up. Enter stumblingly an entirely canary-coloured young person about twenty years of age, with a suspicious bulge in the bosom of his coat. He had grown no hair on his face; his eyes were of a delicate water-green, and his hat was a brown billycock, which he fingered nervously. As the room was blue with tobacco-smoke (and Latakia at that) he coughed even more nervously, and began seeking for me. I hid behind the writing-table and took notes. What I most noted was the bulge in his bosom. When a man begins to bulge as to that portion of his anatomy, hit him in the eye, for reasons which will be apparent later on. He saw me and advanced timidly. I invited him seductively to the only other chair, and "What's the trouble?" said I. "I wanted to see you," said he. "I am me," said I. "I--I--I thought you would be quite otherwise," said he. "I am, on the contrary, completely this way," said I. "Sit still, take your time and tell me all about it." He wriggled tremulously for three minutes, and coughed again. I surveyed him, and waited developments. The bulge under the bosom crackled. Then I frowned. At the end of three minutes he began. "I wanted to see what you were like," said he. I inclined my head stiffly, as though all London habitually climbed the storeys on the same errand and rather wearied me. Then he delivered himself of a speech which he had evidently got by heart. He flushed painfully in the delivery. "I am flattered," I said at the conclusion. "It's beastly gratifying. What do you want?" "Advice, if you will be so good," said the young man. "Then you had better go somewhere else," said I. The young man turned pink. "But I thought, after I had read your works--all your works, on my word--I had hoped that you would understand me, and I really have come for advice." The bulge crackled more ominously than ever. "I understand perfectly," said I. "You are oppressed with vague and nameless longings, are you not?" "I am, terribly," said he. "You do not wish to be as other men are? You desire to emerge from the common herd, to make your mark, and so forth?" "Yes," said he in an awestricken whisper. "That is my desire." "Also," said I, "you love, excessively, in several places at once cooks, housemaids, governesses, schoolgirls, and the aunts of other people." "But one only," said he, and the pink deepened to beetroot. "Consequently," said I, "you have written much--you have written verses." "It was to teach me to write prose, only to teach me to write prose," he murmured. "You do it yourself, because I have bought your works--all your works." He spoke as if he had purchased dunghills _en bloc_.