"One never does really wear out from work, Mrs. Channing. I used to think I was wearing out at old Galloway's; but I didn't know what work was until I got to Natal. I learnt it then." "Did You sit up to work at night at Port Natal?" "Only when I had not got a bed to go to," answered candid Roland. "Mine was not that kind of work, sitting up to burn the midnight oil; it lay in knocking about." "That's quite different." "What puzzles me more than anything is, that Gerald should have turned author," resumed Roland. "Henry Ollivera was talking about genius at our place the other day. Why, according to what he described it to be, Gerald Yorke must have about as much genius as a walking gander." Ellen laughed. "Hamish says Gerald has no real genius," she said. "But he has a good deal of talent. He is what may be called a dashing writer." "Well, I don't know," disputed Roland, who was hard of belief in these alleged qualities of his brother. "I remember in the old days at home, when Gerald was at the college-school, he couldn't be got to write a letter. If Lady Augusta wanted him to write a letter to Carrick, or to George out in India, she would have to din at him for six months. He hated it like poison." "That may have been idleness." "Oh, we all went in for that," acknowledged Roland. "I should have been a very lazy beggar to the end of time but for the emigration to Port Natal." CHAPTER XII. COMMOTION IN THE OFFICE OF GREATOREX AND GREATOREX. The summer sun, scorching the walls of houses and the street pavements with its heat and its glare, threw itself in great might into the offices of Greatorex and Greatorex. Josiah Hurst and Roland Yorke were at their desk, writing side by side. Jenner was at his, similarly occupied; Mr. Brown was holding a conversation in an undertone with some stranger, who had entered with him as he came in from an errand: a man of respectable, staid appearance. Something in the cut of his clothes spoke of the provinces; and Roland Yorke, who never failed to look after other people's affairs, however pressing his own might be, decided that the stranger was a countryman, come up to see the sights of London. "Which I can't, except from the outside," grumbled Roland to himself. "It's an awful sell to have to go about with empty pockets. I wonder who the fellow is?--he has been whispering there twenty minutes if he's been one. He looks as if he had plenty in _his_." Mr. Bede Greatorex came in and took his place at his desk. The head-clerk drew his head away from close proximity with his friend's, and commenced work; a hint to the stranger that their gossip must be at an end. The latter asked for a pen and ink, wrote a few words on a leaf he tore from his pocketbook, folded it in two, and gave it to Mr. Brown. "That is my address in town," he said. "Let me see you tonight. I leave tomorrow at midday." "Good," replied Mr. Brown, glancing at the writing on the paper.