"A five-pound note, at the very outside," said he, oracularly. "But whatever it is, it'll be one in the eye for the other uncle! Upon my word, I think we must go to his church to-morrow evening." "It will mean going in to supper afterwards, and you know you didn't like it last time." "I can lump it for the sake of scoring off Uncle Spencer!" But that was more easily said than done, especially, so to speak, on the "home ground," where a small but exclusively feminine and entirely spiritless family sang a chorus of meek approval to the reverend gentleman's every utterance. When, therefore, Mr. Walthew added to his melancholy congratulations a solemn disparagement of all the lighter magazines (which he boasted were never to be seen in his house), the echo from those timid throats was more galling than the speech itself. But when poor Mrs. Ringrose ventured only to hint at her innocent expectations as to the honorarium, and her brother actually laughed outright, and his family made equally merry, then indeed was Harry punished for the ignoble motives with which he had attended his uncle's church. "My good boy," cried Uncle Spencer, with extraordinary geniality, "you will be lucky if you get a sixpence! I say again that I congratulate you on the prospect of getting into print at all. I say again that even that is not less a pleasure than a surprise to me. But I would not delude myself with pecuniary visions until I could write serious articles for the high-class magazines!" Between his mother's presentiments and his uncle's prognostications, the contributor himself endeavoured to strike a happy medium; but even he was disappointed when an afternoon post brought a proof of the verses, together with a postal order for ten-and-sixpence. Harry showed it to his mother without a word, and for the moment they both looked glum. Then the boy burst out laughing, and the lady followed suit. "And I had visions of a fiver," said Harry. "Nay, but I was the worst," said his mother, who was laughing and crying at the same time. "I said twenty!" "It only shows how much the public know about such things. Ten-and-six!" "Well, my boy, that's better than what your uncle said. How long did it take you to write?" "Oh, not more than half an hour. If it comes to that, the money was quickly earned." For a minute and more Mrs. Ringrose gazed steadily at an upper sash, which was one's only chance of seeing the sky through the windows of the flat. Her lips were tightly pursed; they always were when she was in the toils of a calculation. "A thousand a year!" she exclaimed at length. "What do you mean, mother?" "Well, if this poem only took you half an hour, you might easily turn out half a dozen a day. That would be three guineas. Three guineas a day would come to over a thousand a year." Harry laughed and kissed her.