‘Oh, yes,’ said Laurie. ‘You need not beg my pardon. It is too big a connexion to be ashamed of--Renton, Westbury, and Co., at Calcutta, and there’s a house in Liverpool, I believe. Ben ought to have been sent out, had we stuck to the traditions of the family. It has been in existence for a hundred and fifty years.’ ‘Well, then, suppose you go out in place of Ben,’ said Mr. Welby, musingly, as he might have asked him to take physic; upon which Laurie laughed, and grew rather red. ‘My cousin, Dick Westbury, went in Ben’s place,’ he said;--‘the very sort of fellow to make a merchant of. You might as well tell me to go and stand on my head.’ ‘If I could make all the money by it that those fellows do, I should not mind standing on my head,’ said Laurie’s counsellor, reprovingly. ‘Why shouldn’t you be “the very sort” as well? I don’t see that any particular talent is required. A good head, sir, and close attention, and a knowledge of the multiplication-table. But perhaps they did not teach you that at Eton?’ Mr. Welby added, with a gentle sneer, such as he loved. ‘If they did, I have forgotten it years ago,’ said Laurie. ‘Indeed it would not do. You know it would not do. A fellow has to be brought up to it; and besides, I shouldn’t go if I were asked,’ he added, with a sudden cloud on his face. ‘That settles the question,’ said his adviser. ‘You are a fool, my dear fellow; but I thought as much. Well, then, there are all the Government offices;--couldn’t your friends get you into one of them? The very thing for you, sir. Not too much to do, and plenty of time to do it in. You could keep up your studio still.’ ‘But you forget the competitive examination,’ cried Laurie, just as his brother Ben had replied to a similar suggestion. ‘I don’t know Julius Cæsar from Adam,’ he said, laughing. ‘I have not an idea which Göthe it was that discovered printing. I can’t tell whereabouts are the Indian Isles. They’d pluck me as fast as look at me. You forget that we’re high-minded, and that influence is no good now.’ ‘Confound it!’ said Mr. Welby, with energy, pausing to find something else more feasible. Then he bent confidentially across the table, coaxing, almost appealing, to his intractable neophyte. ‘My dear fellow, what do you say to literature?’ said the R.A. in his softest tone. Upon which Laurie burst into uncontrollable laughter.