wanted, and if she were not about, he would tell the customer that the variety was no longer in stock. A greenhouse kept from collapse by the sturdy vine it was supposed to protect ran along the fence on one side of the garden; the rest was a jungle of coarse herbaceous flowers, presumably the survivors of Mr. Gustard's last horticultural effort, about ten years ago. The money made by the tour of the Pink Pierrots did not last very long, and Jimmy was soon forced back to industry. Sylvia nowadays heard more about his successes and failures than when her father was alive, and she begged very hard to be allowed to help on some of his expeditions. "You're no good to me yet," Monkley told her. "You're too old to be really innocent and not old enough to pretend to be. Besides, people don't take school-girls to race meetings. Later on, when you've learned a bit more about life, we'll start a gambling club in the West End and work on a swell scale what I do now in a small way in railway-carriages." This scheme of Jimmy's became a favorite topic; and Sylvia began to regard a flash gambling-hell as the crown of human ambition. Jimmy's imagination used to run riot amid the splendor of it all, as he discoursed of the footmen with plush breeches; of the shaded lamps; of the sideboard loaded with hams and jellies and fruit at which the guests would always be able to refresh themselves, for it would never do to let them go away because they were hungry, and people were always hungry at three in the morning; of the smart page-boy in the entrance of the flats who would know how to reckon up a visitor and give the tip up-stairs by ringing a bell; and of the rigid exclusion of all women except Sylvia herself. "I can see it all before me," Jimmy used to sigh. "I can smell the cigars and whisky. I'm flinging back the curtains when every one has gone and feeling the morning air. And here we are stuck in this old cucumber-frame at Hampstead! But we'll get it, we'll get it. I shall have a scoop one of these days and be able to start saving, and when I've saved a couple of hundred I'll bluff the rest." In October Jimmy came home from Newmarket and told Sylvia he had run against an old friend, who had proposed a money-making scheme which would take him away from London for a couple of months. He could not explain the details to Sylvia, but he might say that it was a confidence trick on the grand scale and that it meant his residing in a northern city. He had told his friend he would give him an answer to-morrow, and wanted to know what Sylvia thought about it. She was surprised by Jimmy's consulting her in this way. She had always taken it for granted that from time to time she would be left alone. Jimmy's action made her realize more clearly than ever that to a great extent she already possessed that liberty of choice the prospect of which had dawned upon her at Swanage.