"Even a wise man is sometimes happy, and I should recommend philosophy to you at this present juncture. As a matter of fact, you may be quite sure that Ringwood won't make any move; but still, as I intend, as you know, to practise at the bar, it may be as well to go away for a time. "If I were you I should stick to journalism; it will pay for bread and butter. You might even write on subjects that you know something about! "With your appreciation of 'master-strokes' you cannot but admire this my last move. To you, I am sure, the illustrious will now become the august. "MORDAUNT STURTEVANT." "Yes," muttered Gobion, "he is cleverer than I am--ten pounds, out of a thousand! Damn the scoundrel!" He swore under his breath for a minute or two, but his quick wit soon grasped the humour of the situation. Though it told against him, the joke was too good to be lost, and he could not help a somewhat bitter laugh. He went to bed when he got back, and, having nothing particular to do, lay far into the morning, listening lazily to the sounds of the house. He heard Mrs. Ebbage shouting angrily at her children, while in the distance a tinkling piano spun out "Belle Mahone," and every half-hour or so someone on the other side of the wall knocked his pipe out against the mantelpiece. A smell of steak and onions floated into the room. He looked round. It was what is known as a "bed-sitter" on the ground-floor at the end of the main passage. He got up and looked out of the window, making the discovery that the landlady and her family lived below him. Opposite the window, some four yards away, was the straight wall of the next house, while below he looked down into a deep yard into which the back door opened. It was entirely enclosed by the two houses, forming a sort of pit or well. Some children were playing in the dirt, while just below his window a rope was fastened, with some socks and a flannel shirt drying on it. His room was furnished with the bed, a jug and basin standing on an old sugar-box painted green, an old armchair, a table, a wooden chair, and a mirror over the fire, in which a crack down the middle was repaired by a strip of paper gilded to match the frame. The walls were decorated with a black japanned pipe-rack studded with pink and green stars, a medallion of the Queen stamped in bronze cardboard, and a photograph of the new Scotland Yard framed in shiny yellow wood.