The imaginative faculty plays a great part in the existence of the reduced gentleman! Kellett actually revelled in the gorgeous visions this friend could conjure up. There was that amount of plausibility in his reasonings that satisfied scruple as to practicability, and made him regard Beecher as the most extraordinary instance of a grand financial genius lost to the world,--a great Chancellor of the Exchequer born to devise budgets in obscurity! Bella took a very different measure of him: she read him with all a woman's nicest appreciation, and knew him thoroughly; she saw, however, how much his society pleased her father, how their Sunday strolls together rallied him from the dreary depression the week was sure to leave behind it, and how these harmless visions of imaginary prosperity served to cheer the gloom of actual poverty. She, therefore, concealed so much as she could of her own opinion, and received Beecher as cordially as she was able. “Ah, Paul, my boy, how goes it? Miss Kellett, how d'ye do?” said Beecher, with that easy air and pleasant smile that well became him. “I thought by starting early I should just catch you at breakfast, while I also took another hour out of my Sunday,--the one day the law mercifully bestows on such poor devils as myself,--ha, ha, ba!” And he laughed heartily, as though insolvency was as droll a thing as could be. “You bear up well, anyhow, Beecher,” said Kellett, admiringly. “What's the odds so long as you're happy!” cried the other, gayly. “Never say die. They take it out in fifty per cent, but they can't work the oracle against our good spirits, eh, Kellett? The _mens sana in corpore_,--what d'ye call him, my lad?--that's the real thing.” “Indeed, I suppose it is!” said Kellett, not very clear as to what he concurred in. “There are few fellows, let me tell you, would be as light-hearted as I am, with four writs and a judge's warrant hanging over them,--eh, Miss Bella, what do you say to that?” said Beecher. She smiled half sadly and said nothing. “Ask John Scott,--ask Bicknell Morris, or any of the 'Legs' you like,--if there's a man of them all ever bore up like me. 'Beecher's a bar of iron,' they 'll tell you; 'that fellow can bear any amount of hammering.' and maybe I have n't had it! And all Lackington's fault!” “That's the worst of all!” said Kellett, who had listened to the same accusation in the self-same words at least a hundred times before. “Lackington is the greatest fool going! He does n't see the advantage of pushing his family influence. He might have had me in for 'Mallow.' Grog Davis said to him one day, 'Look now, my Lord, Annesley is the best horse in your stable, if you 'd only stand to win on him, he is!' But Lackington would not hear of it. He thinks me a flat! You won't believe it, but he does!” “Faith! he's wrong there,” said Kellett, with all the emphasis of sincerity.