“Interested as you are in the success of our noble firm, you will thank, instead of blaming me, for an apparently unceremonious departure. By an extraordinary coincidence, Mr. Fookes has also been summoned peremptorily to Constantinople, to contract with the Sultan for warming the sacks of the ladies who are, from time to time, deposited in the Bosporus. “Therefore, gentlemen, the entire interest of the London branch is left in your experienced hands. Be steady, I entreat you; be diligent, be methodical. Above all things, remember that rigid probity, and the strictest punctuality in meeting payments, are the _very soul of business_, and that an ounce of practice is worth a pound of precept. But I have the purest confidence in you. I need not appeal to the honour of four university men. From my childhood upward, I have admired those admirable institutions, and the knowledge of life imparted by them. ‘Quid leges sine moribus?’ Excuse me; it is all the Latin I know. “There is a raw Irishman among you, rather of the physical order; if he is violent, expel him. Every gentleman will be entitled to his own deal desk, upon discharge of the bill, which he will find made out in his name, in the drawer thereof. And now farewell. I have been prolix in the endeavour to be precise. “There are no funds in hand for the London branch, but our credit is unbounded. Push our united interests, for I trust you to the last farthing. I hope to find you with coffers full, and commercial honour untainted, on the 31st of February prox. “Believe me, Gentlemen, ever your affectionate partner, “HEARTY WIBRAHAM, D.C.L. “P.S.—If none of my partners know the way to enter an order, the office–boy will instruct the manager of the firm.—H. W.” “Consummate scoundrel!” exclaimed the little Cantab, with the beard of an oyster in his throat. “Detasteable heepocrite!” cried the representative of Durham. “Raw Irishman! Oh then the powers! And the punch of the head I never giv’ him, a week will be next Saturday.” Mr. OʼToole danced round the room, caught up the desks like dolls, and dashed all their noses together. Then he summoned the landlord, and pelted him out of the room and up the stairs with oyster–shells, the books, and the whisky–bottle, and two pewter–pots after his legs, as he luckily got round the landing–place. The terrified man, and his wife worse frightened, locked themselves in, and then threw up a window and bawled out for the police. Cradock, feeling ashamed of the uproar, seized OʼToole by the collar; and the Durham man, being sedate and steady, grasped him on the other side. So they lifted him off the ground, and bore him even into Hyde Park, and there they left him upon a bench, and each went his several way. The police, according to precedent, were in time to be too late. CHAPTER X.