"_Don’t read the reviews when they come out, John. Send them along to me, and I’ll sort out the best ones and send them back to you to read. As far as I can see, there are so many critics who get the personal note into their criticisms, and to read these, whether praising or blaming, won’t do you any good; so send them all along to me before you look at them. The first moment you can send me a copy, of course, you will. Your loving father._" Here the letter ended. Long as it was, it might well have been longer. They were good company, those two old people, talking to him through those thin sheets of foreign paper, one breaking in upon the other with all due courtesy, just as they might with a "Finish what you have to say, my dear," in ordinary conversation. And now they had gone to the country, too--they had left him alone. When he had folded up the letter, it was almost as if he could hear the door bang again for the third time. He leant back in his chair with an involuntary sigh. What a few people, after all, there were in the world whom he really knew! What a few people who would seek out his company on such a day as this! He stood up and stretched out his arms above his head--it was---- He stopped. A sound had struck to his heart and set it beating, as when the bull’s-eye of a target is hit. The bell had rung! His electric bell! The electric bell which had raised him immeasureably in station above Mrs. Morrell and Mrs. Brown, who had only a knocker common to the whole house--one, in fact, of the landlord’s fixtures! It had rung, and his heart was beating to the echoes of it. In another second, he had opened his door; in another moment, he was flying down the uncarpeted wooden stairs, five at a time. At the door itself, he paused, playing with the sensation of uncertainty. Who could it be? If the honest truth be known, it scarcely mattered. Someone! Someone had come out of nowhere to keep him company. A few personalities rushed to his mind. It might be the man who sometimes illustrated his stories, an untidy individual who had a single phrase that he always introduced into every conversation--it was, "Lend me half-a-crown till to-morrow, will you?" It would be splendid if it were him. They could lunch together on the half-crown. It might be the traveller from the wholesale tailor’s--a man whom he had found begging in the street, and told to come round to Number 39 whenever he was at his wit’s end for a meal. That would be better still; he was a man full of experiences, full of stories from the various sleeping-houses where he spent his nights. Supposing it were Jill! A foolish, a hopeless thought to enter the mind. She did not know where he lived. She might, though, by some freak of CHAPTER XVII THE FLY IN THE AMBER