"Good! Now I should just wish you to see it. Naturally, not having been brought up to the business, you cannot be supposed to know all the ins and outs of our trade, but a child might tell the inferiority of this. If not detaining you, sir, I really should feel obliged by your stepping this way," and with an air he flung open the door of his office, and pointing to a powder of a whity-brown colour lying on the desk, asked ironically, "That is a first-rate article, ain't it, sir?" Rupert shook his head; and Mr. Hankins thus encouraged, pressed his point. "Here, ma'am," he said, taking up an other parcel and opening it, "is something like. Look at the difference. I declare, upon my conscience," continued Mr. Hankins, turning to Rupert and forgetting in his energy the presence of his employer's wife, "it is enough to drive a man out of his mind to be obliged to sign a receipt-note for such rubbish. I often think things here might make people believe that old story the parsons tell about the Israelites being ordered to make bricks without straw. After what I have seen this last eighteen months I fancy I could almost swallow anything," finished Mr. Hankins with that advanced and almost unconscious scepticism which is so curious an adjunct to skilled labour at this period of the world's history. Rupert looked uneasily at his companion. At any other time she might have felt inclined to enter into a controversy with Mr. Hankins on the religious question, but at that moment her heart was so full of her husband's position that the orthodoxy or non-orthodoxy of any person's opinions seemed quite a secondary matter in her eyes. "Surely," she began, "Mr. Mortomley is the only person to say here what is good or bad. If he approves of this," and she pointed to the barytes, "it is not fitting any one else should disapprove." "_Mr. Mortomley won't look at it, ma'am_," was the ominous answer. "If I go to him, he says, 'I am busy now,' or, 'you must do the best you can with it,' or, 'I will write and complain;' and all the while as fine a business as there is in the Home counties is going to the devil. I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I can't help saying it. You heard, sir, I suppose, that Traceys had sent back all the ten tons of Brunswick green," (Rupert nodded) "and if things go on much longer as they have been going, we shall have everything sent back. If it wasn't for the respect I have to Mr. Mortomley, I would not stay here an hour; and as it is, I do not know as how I can bear it much longer." Which last was intended as a side blow to be carried by Mrs. Mortomley to her husband. Mr. Hankins folded up his samples, took his keys, said, "Evening, sir," "Good evening, ma'am," touched the brim of his hat, and sauntered leisurely across the yard leaving his visitors alone. "I wanted you to hear, Dolly," said Rupert, "but I fear in my wisdom I have been a brute."