"Well, I suppose that must do. But sixteen pounds!--people seem to think I am made of money. I tell you what, Hancock, the great art in getting through life is to make yourself out a poor man--go about in an old coat and hat; you are just as comfortable, and you are not pestered by every beggar and beast that wants money." "Decidedly, decidedly--I think you are right," said his listener, standing now on one foot, now on the other. "Once you get the reputation of being rich you are ruined--what's the matter with you?" "Twinges of gout, twinges of gout. I can't get rid of it." "Gout? Have you been to a doctor for it?" "Yes." "Well, don't mind what he says; try my remedy. Gout, my dear sir, is incurable with drugs, I've tried 'em. You try hot air baths and vegetarianism; it cured me. I don't say a _strictly_ vegetarian diet, but just as little meat as you can take. I get it myself. Hancock, we're not so young as we were, and the wine and women of our youth revisit us; yes, the wine and women----" He stopped. Fanny had just emerged from the shop. The cabman who drove Sir Henry Tempest that day from Oxford Street to the Raleigh Club has not yet solved the problem as to "what the old gent, was laughing about." "I'm awfully sorry to have kept you such a time," said Fanny, as they wandered away, "but those shopmen are so stupid. Who was that nice-looking old gentleman you were talking to?" "That was Sir Henry Tempest; but he never struck me as being especially nice-looking. He is not a bad man in his way--but a bore; yes, very decidedly a bore." "Come here," said Fanny, from whose facile mind the charms of Sir Henry Tempest had vanished--"Come here, and I will buy you something." She turned to a jeweller's shop. "But, my dear child," said James, "I never wear jewellery--never." "Oh, I don't mean _really_ to buy you something, I only mean make belief--window-shopping, you know. I often go out by myself and buy heaps of things like that, watches and carriages, and all sorts of things. I enjoy it just as much as if I were buying them really; more, I think, for I don't get tired of them. Do you know that when I want a thing and get it I don't want it any more? I often get married like that." "Like what?" asked the astonished Mr Hancock. "Window-shopping. I see sometimes _such_ a nice-looking man in the street or the park, then I marry him and he's ever so nice; but if I married him really I'm sure I'd hate him, or at least be tired of him in a day or two. Now, see here! I will buy you--let me see--let me see--_that_!" She pointed suddenly to an atrocious carbuncle scarf-pin. "That, and that watch with the long hand that goes hopping round. You can have the whole window," said Fanny, suddenly becoming lavishly generous. "But the scarf-pin would suit you, and the watch would be useful for--for--well, it looks like a business man's watch." Mr Hancock sighed. "Say an old man's watch, Fanny--may I call you Fanny?"