The two men very soon had something like each other's measure. They could each understand his neighbor's rascality, while his own seemed to each only a law of nature. "You generally pay, don't you?" added Molken. Tom laughed. "Yes, I do generally, and a penny to the cook besides, which, I will be bound, he does not. But that's nothing to the point. He hates me, though why, I'm sure I don't--I can only guess." "Some girl, I suppose," said Molken, coolly. Thomas felt too much flattered to endeavor even to dilute the insinuation; and Molken went on: "Well, but how can the fellow bear malice? Of course, he must have seen from the first that he had no chance with you. I'll tell you what, Worboise; I have had a good deal of experience, and it is my conviction, from what I have seen of you, that you are one of the lucky ones--one of the elect, you know-born to it, and can't help yourself." Tom pulled out his watch. "Half an hour to spare yet," he said. "Come up to the smoking-room." Having ordered a bottle of Rhine wine, Tom turned to Molken, and said: "What did you mean by saying that I was one of the lucky ones?" "Oh, don't you know there are some men born under a lucky star--as they would have said in old times? What the cause is, of course I don't know, except it be that Heaven must have some favorites, if only for the sake of variety. At all events, there is no denying that some men are born to luck. They are lucky in everything they put their hands to. Did you ever try your luck in a lottery, now?" "I did in a raffle, once." "Well?" "I won a picture." "I told you so! And it would be just the same whatever you tried. You are cut out for it. You have the luck-mark on you. I was sure of it." "How can you tell that?" asked Tom, lingering like a fly over the sweet poison, and ready to swallow almost any absurdity that represented him as something different from the ran of ordinary mortals, of whom he was, as yet at least, a very ordinary specimen. "Never you mind how I can tell. But I will tell you this much, that I have experience; and your own Bacon says that the laws of everything are to be found out by observation and experiment. I have observed, and I have experimented, and I tell you you are a lucky one." Tom stroked the faintest neutrality of a coming mustache, ponderingly and pleasedly, and said nothing. "By the by, are you coming to me to-night?" asked Molken. "No--o," answered Tom, still stroking his upper lip with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, "I think not. I believe I have an engagement to-night, somewhere or other." He took out his pocket-book, and pretended to look. "Yes. I can't have my lesson to-night." "Then I needn't stop at home for you. By the way, have you a sovereign about you? I wouldn't trouble you, you know, only, as I told you, I haven't got one. I believe your quarter is out to-night."