menace was clearly useless:
and yet the idea of changeing one of the notes and for so infamous a
creature, caused pangs that helped him further to endure his dogging
feet and filthy tongue. This continued until he saw a woman's hand
waving from a cab. Presuming that such a signal, objectionable as it
was, must be addressed to himself, he considered whether he should lift
his hat, or simply smile as a favoured, but not too deeply flattered,
man. The cab drew up, and the woman said, "Sedgett." She was a
well-looking woman, strongly coloured, brown-eyed, and hearty in
appearance.

"What a brute you are, Sedgett, not to be at home when you brought me up
to London with all the boxes and bedding--my goodness! It's a Providence
I caught you in my eye, or I should have been driving down to the docks,
and seeing about the ship. You are a brute. Come in, at once."

"If you're up to calling names, I've got one or two for you," Sedgett
growled.

Algernon had heard enough. Sure that he had left Sedgett in hands not
likely to relinquish him, he passed on with elastic step. Wine was
greatly desired, after his torments. Where was credit to be had? True,
he looked contemptuously on the blooming land of credit now, but an
entry to it by one of the back doors would have been convenient, so that
he might be nourished and restored by a benevolent dinner, while he kept
his Thousand intact. However, he dismissed the contemplation of credit
and its transient charms. "I won't dine at all," he said.

A beggar woman stretched out her hand--he dropped a shilling in it.

"Hang me, if I shall be able to," was his next reflection; and with
the remaining three and sixpence, he crossed the threshold of a
tobacconist's shop and bought cigars, to save himself from excesses
in charity. After gravely reproaching the tobacconist for the growing
costliness of cigars, he came into the air, feeling extraordinarily
empty. Of this he soon understood the cause, and it amused him.
Accustomed to the smell of tobacco always when he came from his dinner,
it seemed, as the fumes of the shop took his nostril, that demands were
being made within him by an inquisitive spirit, and dissatisfaction
expressed at the vacancy there.

"What's the use? I can't dine," he uttered argumentatively. "I'm not
going to change a note, and I won't dine. I've no Club. There's not a
fellow I can see who'll ask me to dine. I'll lounge along home. There is
some Sherry there."

But A