Surely, with all his faults, our friend thus proved himself a knight faithful and loyal, _à la mode_. But having written it, Charlie remembered that he did not know where to send it; for Mrs. Gower was off in a chariot which bore no freight of worldly care. Was she not mistress of Aladdin’s lamp? She had but to rub a finger, and all things were heaped at her feet. Aye; but the slaves of the lamp, who were they? Suppose they were not faithful; suppose they proved unruly and rose up in revolt? Did not even an Aladdin’s slave turn out to be one of the Genii? Townley liked Mrs. Gower, and did not wish her to be humbled. Socially, she helped him still. Should he say Lenox? He thought a moment; and the upshot of his deliberations was a resolve to do nothing for a day at least. Whereupon he went to bed, and, let us hope, to pleasant dreams. For he could not quite account for Tamms’s virtuous refusal to sell their own bonds before the coming default. CHAPTER XXIII. THE SLAVES OF THE LAMP. “You had better not go back to-day,” said Mr. Tamms to Charlie when he came down in the morning. “They can get along without you at the office; besides, I should like you to drive with me to Ocean Grove.” Charlie was always ready enough to get along without the office, even if the converse of that proposition had not been unusual enough upon the lips of Mr. Tamms to excite his curiosity. So the long-tailed fast horses were brought out in the trotting-buggy, and, well provided with cigars and morning papers, the two set forth upon their journey. It was a piping hot day; the glaring surface of the sea lay still beside them, and the straight, unshaded, red-clay road seemed to be rapidly baking into brick. Mrs. Haberman came to see them off, robed still in a sort of gorgeous bedchamber arrangement of pale silk and laces, the inevitable large diamonds still in her ears. For some miles their way was the same they had taken the day before, along the rows of shadeless villas, each “cottage” more ornate and ramifying than the last; then they came to a long rise of the sweltering fields, past a thin grove of pines, a few cheaper boarding-houses, and a swamp with an artificial pond. Beyond this the hotels began again; and they crossed a long lagoon that looked like some breeding-place for fevers and lay between two great wooden cities; these were Asbury Park and Ocean Grove; and in front of them was still the sea.