"An honourable profession, is it not?" the lad continued in a tone of mockery. "How many of your young friends, do you think, pass in honestly? It is a competitive examination, too, mind you. And how many do you think employ me--me--to pass for them?" "You should be ashamed to boast of it," the Colonel replied, "if you are not afraid." "And what should they be? Tell me that!" "They are mean fellows, whoever they are." "So! so! You think so!" the young man laughed triumphantly. And then all at once the light seemed to die out of his clever face, and I saw before me only a half-starved lad, with his shabby clerk's coat buttoned up to his throat to hide the want of a shirt. The same change was visible, I think, to the Colonel's eye; for he looked at me and muttered something about the cab. Understanding that he wanted a word with the young fellow alone, I went to the window and for a moment or so pretended to gaze through its murky panes. When I turned, the two men were talking by the door; the drunken father was snoring behind his improvised screen; and on a painted deal table beside me I remarked the one and only article of luxury in the room--a small soiled album. With a grunt I threw it open. It disclosed the portraits of two lads, simpering whiskerless faces, surmounting irreproachable dog-collars and sporting pins. I turned a page and came on two more bearing a family resemblance in features, dog-collars, and pins to the others. I turned again with a pish! and a pshaw! and found a vacant place, and opposite it--a portrait of Jim! I stared at it for a moment in unthinking wonder, and then in a twinkling it flashed across me what these portraits were, and above all, what this portrait of Jim, placed in this scoundrel's album meant. I remembered how anxious the Colonel had been as the lad's examination drew near; how bitterly he had denounced the competitive system, and vowed a dozen times a day that, what with pundits and crammers and young officers who should have been girls and gone to Girton, the service was going to the dogs. "To the dogs, do you hear me, sir!" And then I recalled his great relief when the boy came out quite high up; and the change which had at once taken place in his sentiments. "We must move with the times, sir; it is no good running your head against a brick wall! We must move with the times, begad!" and so forth. And--well, I let fall a pretty strong word, at which the Colonel turned. "What is it, Major?" he said. But, seeing me standing motionless by the window, he turned again and spoke to the young man beside him. "Well, think about it, and let me know at that address. Now," he continued, advancing towards me, "what is it, Joe?"