"I dare say! What would you have me do, if I did give it up?" "Pocket your pride, and find a situation." Charles tossed his head. Pride was almost as much in the ascendant with him as it ever had been. He thought how old and silly Edina was growing. But he remembered what she had done for them, and would not quarrel with her. "Time enough to talk of that, Edina, when I have had Colonel Cockburn's answer." Edina said no more for a few moments. She rose; shook out Robert's completed pinafore, and folded it. "I had a scheme in my head, Charley; but you don't seem inclined to hear anything I may say upon the subject." "Yes, I will," replied Charley, opening his ears at the rather attractive word "scheme." "I will hear that." "I cannot help thinking that if George Atkinson were applied to, he would give you a post in his bank. He ought to do it. After turning you out of Eagles' Nest----" "I wouldn't apply to him; I wouldn't take it," interrupted Charles, fiercely, his anger aroused by the name. "If he offered me the best post in it to-morrow, I would fling it back in his face. Good-night, Edina: I'm off. I don't care to stay to hear of suggested obligations from _him_." On the day of Edina's departure for Trennach, the morning post brought Colonel Cockburn's answer to Charles. It was very short. Edina, her bonnet on, stood to read it over his shoulder. The colonel intimated that he did not quite comprehend Charles's application; but would see him on his return to London. "So there's nothing for it but to wait--and I hope he won't be long," remarked Charles, as he folded the briefly-worded letter. "You must see there's nothing else, Edina." CHAPTER IX. MR. MAX BROWN. In a populous and somewhat obscure part of Lambeth, not a hundred miles away from the great hospital, Bedlam, there ran a narrow street. Amongst the shops, on the left of this street in going from London, stood a house that could not strictly be called a shop now; though it had been one recently, and the two counters within it still remained. It had formerly been a small chemist's shop. About a year ago, a young medical man named Brown had taken it, done away with the drugs and chemicals, so far as retailing them to the public went, and there set himself up as a doctor. He dispensed his own medicines, so the counters were useful still, and his jars of powders and liquids occupied the pigeon-holes above, where the chemist's jars had once stood. The lower half of the windows had been stained white; on one of them was written in black letters, "Mr. Max Brown, surgeon;" on the other, "Mr. Max Brown, general medical practitioner."