'You are too good,' Brian answered lightly; 'but it isn't a question of money--it's a question of time. The Bar is a horribly slow profession. A man has to eat his heart out waiting for briefs.' 'Yes, I have always heard as much,' said Sir Reginald; 'but will it do as well for you to eat your heart out down here as in the Temple? Will the briefs follow you to Wimperfield when the propitious time comes?' 'I believe they are about as likely to find me here as anywhere else,' answered Brian, moodily,--he was apt to turn somewhat sullen at any suggestion of hard work--'and in the meanwhile I am not wasting my time. I can go on writing for the magazines.' That writing for the magazines was an unknown quantity. The young man occasionally shut himself in a little upstairs study on a wet day, smoked excessively, and was supposed to be writing laboriously, his intellect being fed and sustained by tobacco. Sometimes the result of the day was a fat package of manuscript despatched to the post-office; sometimes there was no result except a few torn sheets of foolscap in the waste-paper basket Sometimes the manuscript came back to the writer after a considerable interval; and at other times Mr. Wendover informed his wife vaguely that 'those fellows' had accepted his contribution. Whatever honorarium he received for his work was expended upon his _menus plaisirs_--or may be said rather to have dribbled from his waistcoat pocket in a series of trivial extravagances which won him a reputation for generosity among grooms and such small deer. To his wife he gave nothing: she was amply provided with money by her father, who would have lavished his newly-acquired wealth upon her if she had been disposed to spend it; but she was not. Her desires were no more extravagant now than when she was receiving ten pounds a quarter from Miss Wendover. Sooth to say, the temptations to extravagance at Wimperfield were not manifold. Ida's only need for money was that she might give it to the poor, and that, according to Jeremy Taylor, is to send one's cash straight to heaven.