“Well, we’ll see about that when they do. Meanwhile I am paying ready money for every mortal thing that comes up the door steps. They think so well of me here that I could have had the whole place furnished like a palace from the drain pipes to the flagstaff, only I determined to take each room in turn when I was ready for it. There’s nearly four hundred pounds under this one ceiling.” There came a tap at the door, and in walked a boy in buttons. “If you please, sir, Mr. Duncan wishes to see you.” “Give my compliments to Mr. Duncan, and tell him he may go to the devil!” “My dear Jimmy!” cried Mrs. Cullingworth. “Tell him I am at dinner; and if all the kings in Europe were waiting in the hall with their crowns in their hands I wouldn’t cross that door mat to see them.” The boy vanished, but was back in an instant. “Please, sir, he won’t go.” “Won’t go! What d’you mean?” Cullingworth sat with his mouth open and his knife and fork sticking up. “What d’you mean, you brat? What are you boggling about?” “It’s his bill, sir,” said the frightened boy. Cullingworth’s face grew dusky, and the veins began to swell on his forehead. “His bill, eh! Look here!” He took his watch out and laid it on the table. “It’s two minutes to eight. At eight I’m coming out, and if I find him there I’ll strew the street with him. Tell him I’ll shred him over the parish. He has two minutes to save his life in, and one of them is nearly gone.” The boy bolted from the room, and in an instant afterwards we heard the bang of the front door, with a clatter of steps down the stairs. Cullingworth lay back in his chair and roared until the tears shone on his eyelashes, while his wife quivered all over with sympathetic merriment. “I’ll drive him mad,” Cullingworth sobbed at last. “He’s a nervous, chicken-livered kind of man; and when I look at him he turns the colour of putty. If I pass his shop I usually just drop in and stand and look at him. I never speak, but just look. It paralyses him. Sometimes the shop is full of people; but it is just the same.” “Who is he, then?” I asked. “He’s my corn merchant. I was saying that I paid my tradesmen as I go, but he is the only exception. He has done me once or twice, you see; and so I try to take it out of him. By the way, you might send him down twenty pounds to-morrow, Hetty. It’s time for an instalment.” What a gossip you will think me, Bertie? But when I begin, my memory brings everything back so clearly, and I write on and on almost unconsciously. Besides, this fellow is such a mixture of qualities, that I could never give you any idea of him by myself; and so I just try to repeat to you what he says, and what he does, so that you may build up your own picture of the man. I know that he has always interested you, and that he does so more now than ever since our fates have drawn us together again.