He lived but for his business, nothing else. He was in his office at ten o'clock, and he never left it, save on some business errand, until six. He never took a holiday except on Christmas-day and Good Friday, when the newspapers proclaimed all business suspended; he never dined out save twice or thrice a-year at the anniversary banquets of the directors of some of those companies in which his stake was large. His enemies wronged him when they said he had no heart. He had sincerely grieved for the old father who had brought him up and loved him deeply in his own peculiar way; his purse-strings were always at the command of those good Samaritans on the Stock Exchange who do so much in such a quiet and unassuming manner; and the clergyman at Brixton knew he might always count upon Mr. Streightley for a handsome subscription to any charity brought under his notice. His manner was odd and _brusque_, arising partly from his preoccupation, partly from his having never mixed in society; but there was nothing pretentious or vulgar, fast or underbred in him: he might have been thought an oddity; he never could have been set down for a snob. See him now as he sits at his desk, poring over his diary, a tall strongly-built man, with long limbs lacking in due amount of muscular development from want of exercise. With a high forehead, a head prematurely bald, but surrounded with a thick fringe of brown hair, with sharp gray eyes looking out from overhanging brows, a thinly-cut aquiline nose, and rather full lips. He has a full whisker, after the ordinary respectable "mutton-chop" outline, and might, if he so pleased, have a large beard, as you can tell by the dark-blue outline round his chin; but Robert Streightley would as soon think of coming up to town outside the Paragon omnibus in a turban as of committing any such unbusiness-like atrocity as growing a beard. One other person is in the room with him just now--Mr. Fowler, his chief clerk, known in the City as Downy Fowler; an old gentleman, who is looked upon as the essence of knowingness, and to whom the fortunes of Streightley and Son are not a little attributable. When this is hinted at, old Mr. Fowler smiles enigmatically; but only in strictest confidence, and to one or two very old friends, declares that, whatever he might have been to the old gentleman, he does not pretend to hold a candle to Mr. Robert, "whose head, my dear sir, is something won-der-ful!" A short sleek gray-headed man, Mr. Fowler; with a high-collared coat much too long in the sleeves, a waistcoat with traces of bygone snuff-pinches lingering in the creases, gray trousers, and gaiter boots. A silent little man, rarely speaking, but in the habit of calling his principal's attention to matters under consideration, such as letters, invoices, and share-lists, with his pointed forefinger. That forefinger was at work at the very moment when they are first presented to reader. It rested on an entry in the diary, and Mr.