bookbinder it also touched him; he had more than once solved the problem of deciding how to behave (when the fiddler exasperated him) by simply asking him some service. The old man had never refused. It was satisfactory to Hyacinth to remember this, as he knocked at his door, very late, after he had allowed him time to come home from the theatre. He knew his habits: Mr Vetch never went straight to bed, but sat by his fire an hour, smoking his pipe, mixing a grog, and reading some old book. Hyacinth knew when to go up by the light in his window, which he could see from a court behind. “Oh, I know I haven’t been to see you for a long time,” he said, in response to the remark with which the fiddler greeted him; “and I may as well tell you immediately what has brought me at present—in addition to the desire to ask after your health. I want to take a young lady to the theatre.” Mr Vetch was habited in a tattered dressing-gown; his apartment smelt strongly of the liquor he was consuming. Divested of his evening-gear he looked to our hero so plucked and blighted that on the spot Hyacinth ceased to hesitate as to his claims in the event of a social liquidation; he, too, was unmistakably a creditor. “I’m afraid you find your young lady rather expensive.” “I find everything expensive,” said Hyacinth, as if to finish that subject. “Especially, I suppose, your secret societies.” “What do you mean by that?” the young man asked, staring. “Why, you told me, in the autumn, that you were just about to join a few.” “A few? How many do you suppose?” And Hyacinth checked himself. “Do you suppose if I had been serious I would tell?” “Oh dear, oh dear,” Mr Vetch murmured, with a sigh. Then he went on: “You want to take her to my shop, eh?” “I’m sorry to say she won’t go there. She wants something in the Strand: that’s a great point. She wants very much to see the _Pearl of Paraguay_. I don’t wish to pay anything, if possible; I am sorry to say I haven’t a penny. But as you know people at the other theatres, and I have heard you say that you do each other little favours, from place to place—_à charge de revanche_, as the French say—it occurred to me that you might be able to get me an order. The piece has been running a long time, and most people (except poor devils like me) must have seen it: therefore there probably isn’t a rush.” Mr Vetch listened in silence, and presently he said, “Do you want a box?” “Oh no; something more modest.” “Why not a box?” asked the fiddler, in a tone which Hyacinth knew. “Because I haven’t got the clothes that people wear in that sort of place, if you must have such a definite reason.” “And your young lady—has she got the clothes?” “Oh, I dare say; she seems to have everything.” “Where does she get them?” “Oh, I don’t know. She belongs to a big shop; she has to be fine.”