“You are right, Dodson, you are perfectly right,” said Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw with great cordiality. “I feel more indebted to your judgment than I am able to express.” Mr. Dodson, girt by the knowledge that complete success had crowned his devices yet again, and fortified also with the feeling that once more he had laid an unerring finger on the pulse of that great establishment, sauntered back to his stool in the left-hand corner with that somewhat sinister nonchalance which must so often clothe natural eminence when it has been brought into contact with an eminence that is merely official. In his own phrase--out of office hours--“Pa had not half as much about him as the back of a coster’s dog.” On the other hand, Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw, unlike so many whose intellectual attainments are merely of the second class, was uncommonly susceptible to the impact of those of the first. “Luff,” said he, “do you know who I think will one day be the head of this world-famous house?” “Who?” observed Mr. Aristophanes Luff. “Matthew Arnold Dodson.” “Surely, surely that is a remote contingency,” observed Mr. Aristophanes Luff with a purr of mild protest. “Yes, Luff, that is my deliberate opinion. For breadth of view, aplomb of manner, maturity of judgment, knowledge of the world and of the human heart, there are few youths in all this great metropolis to compare with Matthew Arnold Dodson.” Inferiority of station and mildness of disposition prevented Mr. Aristophanes Luff from controverting what he felt obliged to regard as an extravagant judgment. He was content to wipe his spectacles, and to blow his nose in as clear a key of dissonance as an innate weakness of character could compass. In the meantime, the subject of this remarkable eulogium, seated on his high stool dispensing wisdom, instruction and stinging rebuke to the bewildered and trembling recipient of these commodities, had no such exalted sentiments for its author. “I tell you, Luney,” said Mr. Dodson, with an expression on his wizened countenance that would not have been unbecoming to that of Voltaire, “I can’t make up my mind whether Pa is a bigger ass than Octavius, or whether Octavius is a bigger ass than Pa. Octavius is a pompous ass, and Pa is a sentimental ass. Octavius has a bit of sentiment in his pomp, and Pa has a bit of pomp in his sentiment; so I suppose one takes the cruet and the other takes the casters. Bah, it makes me sick to think that you and I have to keep dipping the ensign to a couple of amateurs who don’t know they are born! They have about as much knowledge of the game they are trying to play as a sucking-pig has of brown sherry. But you must promise me, Luney, to let this go no further.” “Oh, n-n-no, sir, I will not,” said the boy, not knowing in the least what it was he must let go no further.