"Then you won't be offended," said Harry, greatly relieved, "if I tell you that I have had one or two other irons in the fire?" "Offended, my boy? I should think you a duffer if you had not." In another minute Harry had made a clean breast of his other journeys to the City, and was recounting the latest of those miserable experiences when Lowndes cut him short. "What!" cried he, "your father paid for the fellow's stamps, and he refused to pay for yours?" "We never got so far as that," said Harry bitterly. "He wanted a premium with me, and that settled it. He said three hundred guineas was the usual thing, but in consideration of certain obligations he had once been under to my father (he wasn't such a fool as to go into particulars), he would take me for a hundred and fifty. And he made a tremendous favour of that. He expected me to go down on my knees with gratitude, I daresay, but I just told him that a hundred and fifty was as far beyond me as three hundred, and said good afternoon and came away. Mind you, I don't blame him. Why should I expect so much for so little? He's no worse than any of the rest; they're all the same, and I don't blame any of them. Who am I that I should go asking favours of any one of them? My God, I've asked my last!" "You're your father's son, that's who you are," said Gordon Lowndes. "What your father did for this skunk of a solicitor, he should be the first man to do for you. What's his name, by the way?" "Phipps." "Not Wintour Phipps?" Harry nodded; and his nod turned up every light in the other's expressive face. Gordon Lowndes seized his hat and was on his legs in an instant, as radiant and as eager as when he set out to chasten and correct Harry's tailors. Such little punitive crusades were in fact the salt and pepper of his existence. "My boy," he cried, "I've known Wintour Phipps for years. I know enough to strike Wintour Phipps off the rolls to-morrow. I guess he'll do anything for me, will Wintour Phipps! So you sit just as tight as wax till I come back. I shan't be long." And he was gone before Harry grasped his meaning sufficiently to interfere. For the young fellow was apt to be slow-witted when taken by surprise: and though he ran headlong down the stairs a minute later, he was only in time to see Lowndes dive into a hansom on the other side of the crowded street, and be driven away.