This was after the successful effort had realised only half-a-guinea, and when some subsequent attempt was coming back in disgrace by every post. Mrs. Ringrose had taken a leaf out of Harry's book, and committed a letter to the post without even letting him know that she had written one. An answer came by return, and this she showed to Harry in considerable trepidation. It was from the solicitor whom she had mentioned on the day after Harry's arrival. In it Mr. Wintour Phipps presented his compliments to Mrs. Ringrose, and stated that he would be pleased to see her son any afternoon between three and four o'clock. "I thought old friends were barred?" Harry said, reproachfully. "I thought we were agreed about that, mother?" "But this is not an old friend of yours or mine, my dear. I never knew him; I only know what your father did for him. He paid eighty pounds for his stamps, so I think he might do something for you! And so does he, you may depend, or he would not write that you are to go and see him." "He doesn't insist upon it," said Harry, glancing again at the solicitor's reply. "He puts it pretty formally, too!" "Have I not told you that I never met him? It was your father and his father who were such old friends." "So he writes to you through a clerk!" "How do you know?" "It's the very hand they all tell me I ought to cultivate." "I have no doubt he is a very busy man. I have often heard your father say so. Yet he can spare time to see you! You will go to him, my boy--to please your mother?" "I will think about it, dear." The mid-day post brought back another set of rejected verses. Harry swallowed his pride. "It's all right, mother; I'll go and see that fellow this afternoon." And there followed the last of the begging interviews, which in character and result had little to differentiate it from all the rest. Harry did indeed feel less compunction in bearding his father's god-son than in asking favours of complete strangers. He also fancied that he was better fitted for the law than for business, and, when he came to Bedford Row, he could picture himself going there quite happily every day. The knowledge, too, that this Wintour Phipps was under obligations to his father, sent the young fellow up a pair of dingy stairs with a confidence which had not attended him on any former errand of the kind. And yet in less than ten minutes he was coming down again, with his beating heart turned to lead, but with a livelier contempt for his own innocence than for the hardness of the world as most lately exemplified by Wintour Phipps. Nor would the last of these interviews be worth mentioning but for what followed; for it was on this occasion that Harry went on to Leadenhall Street to get what comfort he could from the one kind heart he knew of in the City of London.