"I would not mind the money I have spent on you," said Hancock, ignoring all this, "the bills I have paid, if, to use your own expression, there was any show for it; but, as far as I can see, you are like a man in a quagmire, the only advance you are making, the only advance visible to mortal eye, is that you are getting deeper into debt;" then two tones lower, "deeper into debt." "Well, see here, lend me a fiver," cried Leavesley, now grown desperate and impudent. James Hancock put his fingers into the upper pocket of his waistcoat, and Leavesley's heart made a spring for his throat. But Mr Hancock did not produce a five-pound note. He produced a small piece of chamois leather with which he polished his glasses, which he had taken off, in a reflective manner. "I'm awfully hard up for the moment, and I have pressing need of it. I don't want you to give me the money, I'll pay it back." Mr Hancock put on his glasses again. "You come to me as one would come to a milch cow, as one would come to a bank in which he had a large deposit." He put his hand in his breast-pocket and took out a note-case that seemed simply bursting with bank-notes. "Now if I accommodate you with a five-pound note I must know, at least, what the pressing need is you speak of." "I want to take a girl up the river, for one thing," answered his nephew, who could no more tell him a lie about the matter, than he could steal a note from that plethoric note-case. James Hancock replaced the case in his pocket and made a motion with his hands as if to say "that ends everything." Leavesley rose to go. "I'd have paid you it back. No matter. I'm going to write a book, and make money out of it. I'll call it the 'Art of Being an Uncle.'" Hancock made a motion with his hands that said, "Go away, I want to read my letters." "Now, look here," said Leavesley, with his hand on the door handle, and inspired with another accession of impudence, "if you'd take _ten_ pounds and put it in your pocket, and come with me and her, and have a jolly good day on the river, wouldn't it be better than sitting in this stuffy old office making money that is no use to any one--you can only live once." "Go away!" said his uncle. "I'm going. Tell me, if I went round to aunt would she accommodate me, do you think?" "Accommodate you to make a fool of yourself with a girl? I hope not, I sincerely hope not." "Well, I'll try. Good day." "Good day." Leavesley went out, and shut the door. Then he suddenly turned, opened the door and looked in. "I say, uncle!" "Well?" replied the unfortunate Mr Hancock, in a testy voice. "Did _you_ never make a fool of yourself with a girl?" The old gentleman grew suddenly so crimson that his nephew shut the door and bolted. He little guessed how _àpropos_ that question was. CHAPTER III TRIBULATIONS OF AN AUNT He had scarcely gone a hundred yards down Southampton Row, when he heard his name called. "Mr Frank!"