He was back in an hour, radiant, the ticket in his hand, but held tight, so that just one end showed, as if he was afraid of losing it. "You see, sir, it was the right tip, but I must have some coffee at Dieppe, and I haven't one penny over. I can manage with a shilling, sir, and if you would be so kind a couple more for a cab in Paris." He did not know his man. J. would go, or rather he has gone, without breakfast or dinner and any distance on foot when work was at stake. But the reporter was so startled by the suggestion of such hardships for himself that he dropped the ticket on the floor, and before he could snatch it up again J. had seen that it was good not for Paris, but for a 'bus in the Strand. I wish I had been half as stern with the assistant editor from Philadelphia. I knew him for what he was the minute he came into the room. He was decently, even jauntily dressed, but there hung about him the smell of stale cigars and whiskey, which always hangs about those of our Beggars who do not fill our chambers with the sicklier smell of drugs. Nor did I think much of his story. He related it at length with elegance of manner and speech, but it was a poor one, inviting doubt. The card he played was the one he sent in with a well-known Philadelphia name on it, and he strengthened the effect by his talk of the artist with whom he once shared rooms at Eleventh and Spruce streets. That "fetched me." For Eleventh and Spruce streets must ever mean for me the red brick house with the white marble steps and green shutters, the pleasant garden opposite full of trees green and shady on hot summer days, the leisurely horse-cars jingling slowly by,--the house that is so big in all the memories of my childhood and youth. If I can help it, nobody shall ever know what his having lived in its neighbourhood cost me. I was foolish, no doubt, but I gave with my eyes open: sentiment sometimes is not too dearly bought at the price of a little folly.