"Eh!" said Mr. Simnel in a loud high key. "Yes, most unpleasant, of course. We'll talk more about that; but you must be off now. To-day's only half a day, you know; and I've got all sorts of things to do before I go. You shall have that two hundred on Monday, all right. Good-by! see you on Monday," and the Secretary shook hands with the Commissioner until the latter was fairly outside the door. Then Mr. Simnel returned to his desk, and took up his leg again. "It seems to be coming on now," he said to himself, "and all together too. The old man always meant little Alice for a Duke, and now to let her go to such carrion as old Schröder; that looks like smash. He holds heavily in Pernambucos, in Cotopaxis, and other stuff that's run down like water lately; and he must have dropped at least ten thousand in that blessed Bird-in-the-Hand insurance. I think the time has come to put the screw on, and I don't think"--turning to a drawer and taking from an envelope a paper yellow with age--"that he'll dishonour this. What an awful time ago it seems! There,"--replacing the paper,--"go back till you're wanted. You've kept so long that--Ah, by Jove! the other business! To be married, eh? To be married, Kate?" releasing his leg and plucking at his lips. "To be married to Master Charley Beresford! not while I live, my child! not while I live, and have power to turn a screw on in your direction too!" CHAPTER XII. WHERE MR. PRINGLE WENT TO. It has been notified in a previous chapter that Mr. Pringle was in some mental anxiety touching the acquisition of a certain twenty pounds which he required for immediate disbursement. This position he held in common with many of his colleagues at the Tin-Tax Office, and indeed with most junior clerks in the Civil Service. "The truth is," says Captain Smoke, in Douglas Jerrold's comedy, _The Bubbles of the Day_, "I want a thousand pounds." "My dear Smoke," says his friend, "there never was a man yet that did _not_ want a thousand pounds." The truth of the axiom is undeniable; only in the Civil Service the amount is much diminished. Twenty pounds, familiarly known as a "twentyer," is generally the much-desiderated sum among the junior slaves of the Crown; and it was for a "twentyer" that Mr. Pringle now pined. A hosier who some two years before had sued for Mr. Pringle's custom, nor sued in vain,--who had supplied him with under-linen of fine texture and high price, with shirts of brilliant and variegated patterns, with boating jerseys and socks so vivid in stripe that his legs resembled those of the functionary in the opening of the pantomime who by the boys in the gallery is prematurely recognised as the future clown, owing to the resplendent beauty of his ankles,--at length, after repeated transmissions of his "little account," and after mystic hints that he had not yet seen the colour of Mr. Pringle's money, brought into action the terrible engines of the law, and summoned his debtor to the County Court.