“Believe in anything or anybody? Rather. Not many bodies, but a good many things. I believe in Sam Storth. I’ve a very great respect for him too, and mean to do him well. I believe in a good dinner, and if somebody else is fool enough to pay for it, that won’t spoil my appetite, you bet. I believe in good wine, and it won’t break my heart if it comes out of your or any other fellow’s cellar, and if I can’t get good wine at your expense, I’ll be thankful for good beer at my own. There’s a very good tap of it at the Royal, let me tell you. And I believe in good clothes, and I’d rather drive than walk. Third-class riding’s better than first-class walking, let me tell you. And I like a good play, not Shakespeare, you know, nor anything classic, but something you can take easy, with plenty of leg in it, don’t you know! And I like a pretty girl, too, but not enough to chuck myself away on one, and I like a coin or two in an old stocking, for I’ve an eye for a rainy day, and don’t mean to be out in the wet when it comes. There, that’s about my _credo_, Beaumont, and if I can only get a fair share of what I want, there isn’t a heartier singer of the doxology in church than yours truly.” “You’re a Sybarite, Sam, a frankly brutal sensualist. Well, I give you credit for making no pretences. You aren’t a hypocrite anyway.” “It isn’t worth while with you, Beaumont. There’s nothing to be got out of you by make-believe. But I can pull a long face and snivel and turn up the whites of my eyes and groan on occasion. It’s in the family, you know. But I’m not paid for doing it. My uncle is. That’s all the difference. But here we are at the club. Don’t think I’ll go in just yet. I’ll do a half-time at the theatre. So long.” Beaumont entered the reading-room of the club. There was no library in this feeble imitation of a London club. He took up the current number of the “Nineteenth Century Review.” He had to cut its leaves. The members of the club, manufacturers, merchants, and the larger shopkeepers preferred to have their monthlies boiled down for them by Mr. Stead in the “Review of Reviews.” But Edward could not concentrate his mind on the weighty problems discussed by the sages of the century. His thoughts wandered to the scene in the Market Place.