"From this"--he exhibited the half-crown--"and your looks, gov'nor," he said, "I gather that she's accepted ye! My best wishes for yer 'appiness!" "Damn the boy!" said Jack, charging for the door in an explosion of laughter. The boy was already half-way down the street. "Hope my letter was all right," Jack reflected, as he came back, baulked of his prey. "May stop and see me, may she! Bless her heart!" Jack Rock felt that he had the chance of his life. He also felt that he would like to obliterate what, in his humility, he now declared to have been a sad blunder--the offer of his butcher's shop. A man like Andy, a lad with friends like that--Mr. Harry Belfield, Mr. Foot, M.P., Mr. and Miss Wellgood, above all this dazzling Miss Doris Flower--to be the Meriton butcher! Perish the thought! Publishing was a gentleman's business. Aye, and his Andy should not go back to Canada. If he did, old Jack felt that the best part of his own life would be carried far away across the seas. The thing should be done dramatically. "I'd like Andy to have a story to tell her!" It was not at all doubtful whom he meant by "her." Nearly six--the bank was shut long ago. But George Croton was a friend as well as a bank manager; he would just have had tea. Jack crossed the street and dropped in. "Why, of course I can, Jack," said Mr. Croton, wiping his bald head with a red handkerchief. "You've securities lodged with us that more than cover it. Draw your cheque. We won't wrong you over the interest till you adjust the account. Going to buy a Derby winner?" "I ain't so sure I'm not goin' to enter one," said Jack. He wrote his cheque. "That'll be all right to-morrow morning?" "Unless our shutters are up, it will, Jack," Mr. Croton jestingly replied. "Thank God I've been a careful man," thought old Jack. "One that knows a horse too! Her talkin' about 'Andy'!" The Nun continued to amuse and delight him immensely. Why, he'd seen her picture on the hoardings last time he went up to Tattersall's, to sell that bay filly! Lord, not to have thought of that! That was her--the Nun! He thought much more about Miss Flower than about Andy as he took his way to Andy's lodgings. Andy was at home; he had been back from town nearly an hour. But his own concerns were quite out of his head. Harry Belfield had been waiting for him--actually waiting, Harry the Great!--and had hailed him with "I had to come and tell you all about it myself, old fellow!"