Which was not very often. There is nothing very humorous in conveyancing, and in conveyancing Charles Yeldham's life was passed. Gordon Frere, returning from a ball, a supper, or one of his "outings," would hear the roar of Yeldham's shower-bath as he came up the stairs, or would see him, bright and rosy, deep in his books or scratching away with his pen, as he, Frere, with his gibus hat on one side, his collars danced down into a state of limp despondency, and with a faded camellia in his button-hole, peered into the common sitting-room before he crawled to bed. Five in the summer, six in the winter,--these were Charles Yeldham's hours of rising. Then, after his cold bath and his hurried toilette, what he called "treadmill" till eight. A sharp run five times round the Temple Gardens, no matter what the weather, a hurried breakfast--chop, bacon, eggs, what-not, and at it again, "treadmill" till two. Bread-and-cheese, a pint-bottle of Allsopp, a pipe--generally smoked as he leaned out of the window looking on to the river--and "treadmill" till half-past six. Old shooting-coat changed for more presentable garment, hands washed, and Mr. Yeldham walked to the Oxford and Cambridge Club, where he would eat a light dinner, take a very small quantity of wine, and walk back to the Temple to have a final turn of "treadmill" until half-past eleven, when he would turn into bed. He had reduced sleep to a minimum, ascertained that five and a half hours were exactly sufficient for a man, and never wasted a wink. There was no absolute occasion for Charles Yeldham to slave in this manner; but when he commenced his work he had had a powerful incentive to industry, and he had found the work grow on him until he absolutely took delight in it. He was the only son of the Honourable and Reverend Stratford Yeldham, a cadet of the Aylmer family, who had been content to marry the daughter of the clergyman with whom he read during one long vacation, and afterwards to go into orders and take up the family living in Norfolk. The living was not a very rich one, and Charley, who loved his father after a fashion not very common now amongst young men, and who knew that the old gentleman had somewhat pinched and straitened himself to send his son to college with a proper allowance, had made up his mind not only that all that had been spent on him should be repaid, but that his sister Constance--his own dear little sister--should have such a dowry as would enable her to decline any offer whose advantages were merely pecuniary, and at the same time to bring an adequate income to the man of whom her heart should approve. The hope of accomplishing this end lightened Charles Yeldham's labour, mid kept him at his desk and among his law-books without an idea of repining, generally indeed with a sense of positive pleasure.