I needn't detail all the legal business that had to be transacted. There were documents to sign of whose contents I was blissfully ignorant, and lawyers and magistrates to visit; but Worthing steered me safely through the confusing processes. I remembered how my father had said that Worthing was the kind of fellow to have for a friend. Evidently his dying thought turning towards me had been that Worthing would care for me if he left the whole matter in his hands. The matter was tangled enough too; for my father had no discoverable relations, and there seemed some difficulty in proving my identity. His money had been left in a lump sum at a goldsmith's who knew no more of him than his face and his signature. When in need of funds my father had called personally and taken what he wanted from the store. However, at last I found myself master of the inheritance, and entrusting it to Worthing was assured that I might count on a yearly income of a few hundred pounds; for he invested the money for me, and saw the deeds safely banked in my name. He also handed me some papers of my father's: fragments of poems and stories for the most part, which I laid aside to examine at my leisure. The most curious thing to me was the discovery that I really had a name. Of course at school I had had an appendage dangling in the rear of Tommy, but I had paid little heed to it, and cannot now remember what it was. Now I found I had a real name of my own, and felt extraordinarily elated at the discovery. I could sign myself Thomas Garth Playden. But amazing as this discovery was, it was even more amazing to learn that my father, who hadn't even had a Christian name that I knew of, had been Walter Noel Playden, Esq. I couldn't reconcile myself to it. It seemed so utterly foolish to think of my father otherwise than as Daddy. He was associated in my mind with everything romantic and mysterious, and should have been nameless to the end of time. To fix him with a title like this was to strip him of the glamour that had always clouded him about like a glory. He was no longer an emanation from the pages of a wonderful tale, but merely a creature of flesh and blood who clothed himself like another and fed on bread and meat. It was indeed the first blow levelled at the illusions that had clung about my childhood. With a name of my own, and with a father who also had his individual title, I took my first step out of Fairyland into the world of men and women. CHAPTER XXV JENNY SENDS A MESSAGE My affairs were hardly settled before I was whirled away to sea again. One day when I reached my lodging a minute before the stroke of six, puffing, for I had been running so as not to be late, I found a message from Dirk bidding me to make haste aboard. I gathered up my few belongings and ran for the quay, and it wasn't many minutes after my clambering aboard that the anchor was hauled in and we were under way.