"I say Vincent, do stay and hear me for a minute or two. It is something of consequence." Vincent Yorke, not altogether approving of this familiar mode of salutation from Roland, although fate had made them cousins, did not quite see his way to refuse the request. As Roland had said, young Dick was sufficiently good-natured where his pocket was not attacked. He led the way to a corner in a room where they could be private, sat down, and offered a chair to Roland. It was declined. Roland was a great deal too excited and too eager to sit. He poured forth his wants and hopes--that he wished co work honestly for just bread and cheese, and to get his own living, and be beholden to nobody: would he, Dick, help him to a place? He did not mind how hard he worked; till his shirtsleeves were wet with honest sweat, if need be; and live on potatoes and half a pint of beer a day; so that he might just get on a little, and make a sum of two hundred pounds a year: or one hundred to begin with. The word "Dick" slipped out inadvertently in Roland's heat. Not a man living so little capable, as he, of remembering conventionalities when thus excited. Vincent Yorke, detecting the earnest purpose, the sanguine hope, the real single-mindedness of the applicant, could but stare and laugh, and excuse mistakes under the circumstances. The very boldness of the request, preferred with straightforward candour and without the slightest reticence, told on him favourably, because it was so opposite to the crafty diplomacy that most men would have brought to bear on such an application. Favourably only, you understand, in so far as that he did not return a haughty repulse off-hand, but condescended to answer civilly. "Such things are not in my line," he said, and--face to face with that realistic Port Natal traveller, he for once put aside his beloved fashionable attribute, the mincing lisp. "I don't go in for politics; never did go in for 'em; and Government places are not likely to come in my way. You should have applied to Sir Richard. He knows one or two of the Cabinet Ministers." "I did apply to him once," replied Roland, "and he sent me off with a flea in my ear. I said then, I'd never ask him for any thing again, though it were to keep me from starving." Vincent Yorke smiled. "Look here," said he; "you take him in his genial moods. Go up to him now; he'll just have dined. If anything can be got out of him, that's the time." Mr. Vincent Yorke hit upon this quite as much to get rid of Roland, as in any belief in its efficacy. In the main what he said was true--that Sir Richard's after-dinner moods were his genial ones; but that Roland had not the ghost of a chance of being helped, he very well knew. That unsophisticated voyager, however, took it all in. "I'll run up at once," he said. "I'm so much obliged to you, Vincent. I say, are you not soon going to be married? I heard so."