you'll let me have it this time, it shall be the last."

"Upon my word and honour then, I won't. There must be an end to
everything."

Although Mr. Cradell would probably, if pressed, have admitted the
truth of this last assertion, he did not seem to think that the end
had as yet come to his friend's benevolence. It certainly had not
come to his own importunity. "Don't say that, Johnny; pray don't."

"But I do say it."

"When I told Amelia yesterday evening that I didn't like to go to you
again, because of course a man has feelings, she told me to mention
her name. 'I'm sure he'd do it for my sake,' she said."

"I don't believe she said anything of the kind."

"Upon my word she did. You ask her."

"And if she did, she oughtn't to have said it."

"Oh, Johnny, don't speak in that way of her. She's my wife, and you
know what your own feelings were once. But look here,--we are in that
state at home at this moment, that I must get money somewhere before
I go home. I must, indeed. If you'll let me have three pounds this
once, I'll never ask you again. I'll give you a written promise if
you like, and I'll pledge myself to pay it back by thirty shillings
a time out of the next two months' salary. I will, indeed." And
then Mr. Cradell began to cry. But when Johnny at last took out his
cheque-book and wrote a cheque for three pounds, Mr. Cradell's eyes
glistened with joy. "Upon my word I am so much obliged to you! You
are the best fellow that ever lived. And Amelia will say the same
when she hears of it."

"I don't believe she'll say anything of the kind, Cradell. If I
remember anything of her, she has a stouter heart than that." Cradell
admitted that his wife had a stouter heart than himself, and then
made his way back to his own part of the office.

This little interruption to the current of Mr. Eames's thoughts was, I
think, for the good for the service, as immediately on his friend's
departure he went to his work; whereas, had not he been called away
from his reflections about Miss Dale, he would have sat thinking
about her affairs probably for the rest of the morning. As it was, he
really did write a dozen notes in answer to as many private letters
addressed to his chief, Sir Raffle Buffle, in all of which he made
excellently-worded false excuses for the non-performance of various
requests made to Sir Raffle by the writers. "He's about the best
hand at it that I know," said Sir Raffle, one day, to the secretary;