There was another reason, too, why a stoppage of the ten per cent. cheques would be a whack in the eye. You see, I had been doing myself well on them—uncommonly well. I had ordered, as a present to my parents, new furniture for the drawing-room. I had pressed my father to have a small greenhouse put up at my expense. He had always wanted one, but had never been able to run to it. And I had taken Norah about a good deal. Our weekly visit to a matinée (upper circle and ices), followed by tea at the Cabin or Lyons’ Popular, had become an institution. We had gone occasionally to a ball at the Town Hall. What would Norah say when all this ended abruptly without any explanation? There was no getting away from it. Sidney Price was in the soup. CHAPTER 20 NORAH WINS HOME _(Sidney Price’s narrative continued)_ My signed work had run out. For two weeks nothing had been printed over my signature. So far no comment had been raised. But it was only a question of days. But then one afternoon it all came right. It was like this. I was sitting eating my lunch at Eliza’s in Birchin Lane. Twenty minutes was the official allowance for the meal, and I took my twenty minutes at two o’clock. The _St. Stephen’s Gazette_ was lying near me. I picked it up. Anything to distract my thoughts from the trouble to come. That was how I felt. Reading mechanically the front page, I saw a poem, and started violently. This was the poem:— A CRY Hands at the tiller to steer: A star in the murky sky: Water and waste of mere: Whither and why? Sting of absorbent night: Journey of weal or woe: And overhead the light: We go—we go? Darkness a mortal’s part, Mortals of whom we are: Come to a mortal’s heart, Immortal star. _Thos. Blake._ _June 6th._ “Rummy, very rummy,” I exclaimed. The poem was dated yesterday. Had Mr. Cloyster, then, continued to work his system with Thomas Blake to the exclusion of the Reverend and myself? Still worrying over the thing, I turned over the pages of the paper until I chanced to see the following paragraph: LITERARY GOSSIP Few will be surprised to learn that the Rev. John Hatton intends to publish another novel in the immediate future. Mr. Hatton’s first book, _When It Was Lurid_, created little less than a furore. The work on which he is now engaged, which will bear the title of _The Browns of Brixton_, is a tender sketch of English domesticity. This new vein of Mr. Hatton’s will, doubtless, be distinguished by the naturalness of dialogue and sanity of characterisation of his first novel. Messrs. Prodder and Way are to publish it in the autumn. “He’s running the Reverend again, is he?” said I to myself. “And I’m the only one left out. It’s a bit thick.” That night I wrote to Blake and to the Reverend asking whether they had been taken on afresh, and if so, couldn’t I get a look in, as things were pretty serious. The Reverend’s reply arrived first: THE TEMPLE, _June 7th._ _Dear Price_,—