"_Are_ you coming, there?" cried Dick from the foot of the stairs. CHAPTER XX. "I have just been at our friend Levy's," said Randal when he and Dick were outside the street door. "He, like you, is full of politics--pleasant man--for the business he is said to do." "Well," said Dick slowly, "I suppose he _is_ pleasant, but make the best of it--and still--" "Still what, my dear Avenel?" (Randal here for the first time discarded the formal Mister.) MR AVENEL.--"Still the thing itself is not pleasant." RANDAL, (with his soft hollow laugh.)--"You mean borrowing money upon more than five per cent!" "Oh, curse the percentage. I agree with Bentham on the Usury Laws--no shackles in trade for me, whether in money or anything else. That's not it. But when one owes a fellow money even at two per cent, and 'tis not convenient to pay him, why, somehow or other, it makes one feel small; it takes the British Liberty out of a man!" "I should have thought you more likely to lend money than to borrow it." "Well, I guess you are right there, as a general rule. But I tell you what it is, sir; there is too great a mania for competition getting up in this rotten old country of ours. I am as liberal as most men. I like competition to a certain extent, but there is too much of it, sir--too much of it!" Randal looked sad and convinced. But if Leonard had heard Dick Avenel, what would have been his amaze? Dick Avenel rail against competition! Think there could be too much of it! Of course, "heaven and earth are coming together," said the spider when the housemaid's broom invaded its cobweb. Dick was all for sweeping away other cobwebs; but he certainly thought heaven and earth coming together when he saw a great Turk's-head besom poked up at his own.