es.
Cabby's fare was exorbitant, the passenger thought; but, after a faint
resistance, Mr. Wynn was glad to escape from the storm of h-less
remonstrances by payment of the full demand, and so entered the
coffee-room.

It was dingy and shabby-genteel, like the exterior; a quarter of a
century might have elapsed since the faded paper had been put up, or a
stroke of painting executed, in that dispiriting apartment. Meanwhile,
all the agencies of travel-stain had been defacing both. An odour of
continual meal-times hung about it; likewise of smoke of every grade,
from the perfumed havanna to the plebeian pigtail. The little tables
were dark with hard work and antiquity; the chair seats polished with
innumerable frictions. A creeping old waiter, who seemed to have known
better days in a higher-class establishment, came to receive the
new-comer's orders; and Robert sat down to wait for his modest chop and
glass of ale.

That morning's _Times_ lay on his table: he glanced over the broad sheet
of advertisements--that wondrous daily record of need and of endeavour
among the toiling millions of London. The inexplicable solitude in a
crowd came about the reader's heart: what a poor chance had a provincial
stranger amid the jostling multitude all eager for the prizes of comfort
and competence! Robert went back for anchor to one strong fact. The
Honourable Mr. Currie Faver, Secretary to the Board of Patronage, had
declared to the member for the Irish county of C----, on the eve of an
important division, that his young friend should have the earliest
appointment at his disposal in a certain department. Robert Wynn felt an
inward gratulation on the superiority of his auspices. True, the promise
made in January yet remained due in July; but there were numberless
excellent good reasons why Mr. Currie Faver had been as yet unable to
redeem his pledge.

Robert turned his paper to look for the news: a paragraph in the corner
arrested his attention.

'We learn from the best authority that, owing to the diminution of
business consequent upon recent Acts of the Legislature, it is the
intention of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Public Locomotion to reduce
their staffs of officials, so that no fresh appointments can be made for
some months.'

He gazed at this piece of intelligence much longer than was necessary
for the mere reading of it. The Board of Public Locomotion was the very
department in which he had been promised a clerkship. Ro