"Well, five thousand," said Mr. Clutterbuck, his head bent well backwards, his eyes regarding the ceiling, and his tone expressing the enormity of the sum---- "No, but," continued Nobby, up on his feet again,--"I _do_ object, and so would you if you were where I am; five thousand means different things to different men; now just because a man is in parliament and weighs in with five thousand...." Here he was silent. He had some regard for truth and he felt that his temperament was running away with him. How many men he could call to mind who had given first and last twenty, thirty, forty thousand pounds to some great cause and had remained the plain commoners they were born. It would have been well for him and for his host if he had spoken aloud as the confession passed through his thought, but Nobby was as weak as he was good-natured and that thought remained unexpressed. Mr. Clutterbuck continued his theme. Financial success had bred in him a dependence upon fact and figure. Five thousand pounds was a very large sum, but it was tangible; it was precise; one could write it down. "I know men," he said slowly, "to whom that would be a capital: believe me, a considerable capital. Why, there's Doctor Hutchinson," he said, lowering his voice, and bending forward, "if you will believe me" (in still lower tones) "that man hasn't got five thousand now. He's not worth it." He pressed his lips together as men do after a final statement, and said by way of conclusion: "They're all like that, that call themselves 'professional men.' Here to-day and gone to-morrow, except they take out a patent or something, or really go in for business, and precious few can do that." "You're quite right," said Nobby, who was bored and who had been thinking anxiously about the hour of next morning's breakfast. "I never had any myself," he added genially, and Mr. Clutterbuck smiled at the jest of the grandson of the Earl of the Creation of the year of the Act of the Union of England and of Ireland. Nobby yawned and sloshed soda water into his glass. "Well, it's a lot of rot, isn't it?" he said, and clinched the conversation down. They went up to bed that night, Mr. Clutterbuck, after apologising, as husbands will, for the lateness of the hour, turned many of his remarks to his wife upon this corrupt practice, weighing its probabilities and its exaggerations, until that lady first passed judgment and then imposed silence. * * * * *