“If you try, you’ll win. Shall I tell you, Master Dolly, the quality which first attracted me towards you?” “What was it?” “It was this. You are one of the very few young fellows I ever met who was not infected with a slavish worship of the titled classes. How, being a Cambridge man, you escaped it, I don’t know; but you have escaped it.” “You’re right there,” said Dolly; but the colour that mounted so suddenly to his cheek, seemed to imply a certain confusion in making the assertion. “You know we had a peerage once in the family, and it is a hobby of my governor’s to try and revive it. He offered the present people to contest any two of the Opposition seats, and proposed to myself to go into the House; but I told him flatly, I’d rather get into Graham’s than into Parliament.” “A much harder thing to do!” “You’re in Graham’s, ain’t you?” “Yes; and so shall you be next ballot, if you really wish for it!” “What a trump you are! Do you know, Grenfell, I can’t make it out at all that I never met you before?” “I’m some twelve or fifteen years your senior,” said the other, and a slight twitching of the mouth showed a certain irritation as he spoke; “a few years separates men as essentially as a whole hemisphere.” “I suppose so.” “Town life, too, moves in such a routine, that when a man comes to my age, he no more makes a new acquaintance than he acquires a new sensation.” “And, stranger still,” continued Dolly, with that persistence that pertains to ill breeding, “I never so much as heard of you.” “I feel ashamed of my obscurity!” said Grenfell, and his pale cheek became mottled with red. “No, it ain’t that. I meant only to say that I never heard of any Grenfells but the Piccadilly fellows, Cox and Grenfells! ‘None genuine but signed by us.’ Ha, ha, ha!” and Dolly laughed at his drollery, and the other joined in the mirth quite sufficiently not to attract any especial attention. “Not relatives, I presume?” added Dolly, still laughing. “Delighted if they were!” said Grenfell, with a sickly smile. “I don’t think the dividends would smell of curry powder!” “That’s what Cecil St. John says: ‘Let the greatest scoundrel in England only leave me his money, and I’ll honour his memory.’ Do you know St. John?” “One of my most intimate friends.” “I am dying to know him! Grog Davis says he’s the only man that ever took the wind out of _his_ sails.” “I’ll have him to dinner when I go up to town, and get you to meet him,” said Grenfell. “It must be on a Sunday, though, for Cecil shuns all others, which he calls dun-days, to distinguish from Sundays.” “I’d like to wipe off every shilling he owes. I’d like to set a fellow like that clear with the world.” “I’ll tell him you said so. It will go a very long way towards acquiring his esteem.” “Well, I declare it’s a thing I’d do, if I had my property. I’ve heard wonderful stories about him.”