“Come to get another speech, Fred?” Christopher looked up cheerily from the work before him. The sweet spring season, when the big dinners are going on, is his time of harvest, and after June he can send his sheaves of golden grain to the Bank. It promised to be a busy and a prosperous season. “Come for another speech, old man?” he repeated. “I’m doing a humorous one on Literature, but I can make room for you.” “Hang your speeches!” Fred sat down on the table. “You might offer a man a drink.” He spoke as one oppressed with a sense of injustice. “Seem out of sorts, Fred. What’s gone wrong? Colonial Enterprise? The great concern which interests all Lombard Street hitched up somehow?” He asked with the exasperating grin of the doubter. But he opened a cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and two or three sodas. “Well, old man, there’s your drink.” Fred grunted, helped himself liberally, though it was as yet only eleven in the forenoon. “The great Colonial concern is where it was,” he explained vaguely. “So I supposed. And about Lombard Street?” “Well, I thought better of the City. I thought there was still some enterprise left in this rotten, stagnant, decaying, and declining old country.” Christopher laughed. “They won’t look at it, eh?” “On the contrary, they won’t do anything till they have looked at it.” “Humph! Awkward, isn’t it? I say, Fred, what did you come back for at all? Why not stay in Australia?” “I came back for many reasons. Partly to look after you, Brother Chris.” “Oh! After me? Why after me?” “Well, you see, you are the only one left who knew of my existence. Leonard remembered nothing about me. My grandfather’s lawyers had never heard of me. And one day there came into my head--it was like a voice speaking to me--it said, ‘Fred, you are a Fool. You’ve been twenty years in this country. You’ve got an old lunatic of a grandfather who must have piles and piles of money. Perhaps he’s dead. And no one but Christopher left to remember you. Get off home as quick as you can. Christopher,’ said this remarkable voice, ‘is quite capable of putting his hands on the lot and forgetting you.’ That is what the voice said, my brother.” “Sometimes it’s rats: sometimes it’s cats: sometimes it’s circles: sometimes it’s a voice. Fred, you must have been pretty far gone.” “Perhaps. But I listened to that voice, and, what is more, I obeyed it, and came home. The old man isn’t gone yet. So far that’s safe. And the lawyers know of my existence. So that’s all right. You won’t get the chance of forgetting me, after all.” “Very good, very good. There will be very soon, I should say, the division of a most almighty pile, Fred. You are quite welcome to your share.” “Much obliged, I’m sure. Do you know how much it is?” “I am afraid to calculate. Besides, what will has he made?”