Haskins had come up on the previous day, and having slept on his business had repaired to the grimy office in Chancery Lane to consult his solicitor. Mr. James Ian Robert Roy Macandrew--which was the lawyer's gorgeous name, usually shortened to Tod by his friends because of his ruddy hair--possessed two rooms, sparsely furnished. The outer room contained two lean clerks and an office boy, who labored to increase a gradually growing business, while the inner room was sacred to the master brain that was building up that same business. There was a green-painted safe, an important-looking escritoire with a sliding lid, three or four chairs, a battered bookcase containing Tod's somewhat limited library, and piles of japaned deed-boxes in iron frames. Everything looked very legal and very dry and very dusty, with the exception of Tod himself, spick and span, and far too fashionably dressed for Chancery Lane. Tod should have been strolling in the Row--and if dead-and-gone Macandrews had not squandered their money he probably would have been--beside Charity Bird, if possible. As it was, Tod, looking fresh and well fed and well groomed and alert, dwelt for many hours daily in a dull room, which his ancestors would have scorned. But Tod had been compelled to lay down the ancestral claymore and take up the pen, which was hard on Tod, who much preferred a kilt to a lawyer's wig. However, it was useless to be dignified with Jerry Haskins, as Tod decided, so after a glance at the door to see that it was closed, he unbent. He lighted a cigarette and produced a bottle of whisky and two glasses and a syphon. Not wishing that his clerks should see him unbend to this bacchanalian extent Mr. Macandrew cast a second look at the door, and advised Gerald, in scarcely legal language, to "Fire away." "You've been playing the high-kick-oh, houp-la, since I left you," said Tod with a jolly grin. "I've been doing nothing of the sort," cried Haskins indignantly. "This is very serious." "Is it now?" bantered the lawyer. "Well, when a man decides to marry a girl whom he has only seen for five minutes I rather think it is infernally serious. How did she manage to hook you?" "What a beastly low mind you have, Tod. H'm! Shut up, and hold yourself tight. I am going to startle you." "Startle away." Tod gripped the arms of his sedate chair. "Well then, this Mavis Durham is the living image of Charity Bird." Macandrew stared and glared. "You're rotting, boy. There can only be one angel in the world, and----" "There are two of this especial make," insisted Gerald, leaning back. "I say, Toddy, do be serious." "But are you serious?" "I am, confound you. Don't I look it?" Macandrew stared and glared again. "There is a change in you," he admitted--"love, I suppose. It's the same with myself." "Tod, you don't know what love is."