that which you ask me. Indeed, I know nothing can be done: he has his
half-pay?"

"I think not; or, if he has it, no doubt it all goes on his debts.
That's nothing to us: the man and his child are starving."

"But if it is his own fault,--if he has been imprudent?"

"Ah, well, well; where the devil is Nero?"

"I am so sorry I can't oblige you. If it were anything else--"

"There is something else. My valet--I can't turn him adrift-excellent
fellow, but gets drunk now and then. Will you find him a place in the
Stamp Office?"

"With pleasure."

"No, now I think of it, the man knows my ways: I must keep him. But my
old wine-merchant--civil man, never dunned--is a bankrupt. I am under
great obligations to him, and he has a very pretty daughter. Do you
think you could thrust him into some small place in the Colonies, or
make him a King's Messenger, or something of the sort?"

"If you very much wish it, no doubt I can."

"My dear Audley, I am but feeling my way: the fact is, I want something
for myself."

"Ah, that indeed gives me pleasure!" cried Egerton, with animation.

"The mission to Florence will soon be vacant,--I know it privately. The
place would quite suit me. Pleasant city; the best figs in Italy; very
little to do. You could sound Lord on the subject."

"I will answer beforehand. Lord--would be enchanted to secure to the
public service a man so accomplished as yourself, and the son of a peer
like Lord Lansmere."

Harley L'Estrange sprang to his feet, and flung his cigar in the face of
a stately policeman who was looking up at the balcony.

"Infamous and bloodless official!" cried Harley L'Estrange; "so you
could provide for a pimple-nosed lackey, for a wine-merchant who has
been poisoning the king's subjects with white lead,--or sloe-juice,--for
an idle sybarite, who would complain of a crumpled rose-leaf; and
nothing, in all the vast patronage of England, for a broken-down
soldier, whose dauntless breast was her rampart?"

"Harley," said the member of parliament, with his calm, sensible smile,
"this would be a very good claptrap at a small theatre; but there is
nothing in which parliament demands such rigid economy as the military
branch of the public service; and no man for whom it is so hard to
effect what we must plainly call a job as a subaltern officer who has
done nothing more than his duty,--and all military men do that. Still,
as you take it so earnestly, I will use what interest I can