"Well, I have been rather seedy; but I'm not very bad after all. I've had a good deal of worry lately, in one shape or another, and worry tells on me more than it did. Getting old, I suppose!" "You ought to take a partner, Robert; I mean a business partner. That affair of yours is too big to carry on single-handed. O, tell me, by the way--you won't misconstrue the reason of my asking--that confounded bank failure? Rumour says you were hit hard by it. Is it true?" "Yes; for once in the course of events rumour hasn't lied. Our house was in heavily, and has suffered with the rest." "That's part of your trouble, Robert?" "Well, perhaps part; though I should scarcely say so, as the money-loss has been replaced, and Streightley and Son have passed the sponge across the slate, and look upon it as an unutterably bad debt." "Lucky for them that they are able to do so; had it been my case, I should either have been playing rackets in Whitecross Street, or wearing a black wig and whiskers, and hiding myself as much as possible in a steamer bound to a country without an extradition treaty. I often think if you great commercial swells only knew how we professional men live, and the amount of the balance presently standing to our credit at our bankers----" "Yes; and if you professional men only knew how the commercial swells, as you call us, envy you your freedom from responsibility." "Freedom from responsibility, indeed! By the way, how's your wife?" "_Apropos_ of responsibility! She'd take that as a compliment. She's very well indeed, old boy, very well; not up in town yet. Still staying at Middlemeads, where you've never yet been, though both of us have done our best to get you there." "My dear Robert, what on earth would be the good of my arriving at your country place with a blue stuff bag full of papers, and enjoying my holiday in the country by sticking to your library from morning till night, reading cases, drawing pleas, and giving opinions? I feel perfectly certain that at your library-table, which is probably virgin-free from ink-blots, in your library-chair, which is probably comfortable, and surrounded by your country atmosphere, which of course is pure and fresh, the few wits which I possess would leave me, and the most which I should do at Middlemeads would have the effect of utterly depriving me from ever earning five guineas again. No, I won't come to Middlemeads until I can--with a comfortable conscience--leave my blue bag behind me, and when that will be heaven only knows!" "And in the mean time, and for the mere sake of your work, you drag your life on in these solitary chambers?"