as crisp, curly, and brown, seeming rather
at war with the glossy new hat he wore, and settled more than once upon
his head as he listened to the remarks of the little dapper-looking man
at his side--Podger, otherwise Frank, Pratt, of the Temple.

Pratt was a solemn, neutral-looking fellow; but none the less he was
keen and peculiar, even though, to use his own words, he had been born
without any looks at all.

"There's the wolf, Dick," said Pratt, as they approached the club.
"Who's that with him? Ah, might have known--the lamb."

"You seem to have kept up the old school tricks, Frank," said Trevor,
"and I suppose it gets you into hot water sometimes. Bad habit giving
nicknames. We shouldn't stand it at sea."

"It breaks no bones," said the other, quietly, "and seems to do me
good--safety-valve for my spleen. How odd it is, though, that we four
should be thrown together again in this way!"

"I was thinking the same; but I don't see why we should call things odd
when we have shaped them ourselves. I was cruising about for days to
find you all out."

"Well, it's very kind of you, Dick," said Pratt. "And let me see--I've
won four pounds ten and six of you during the last week at pool and
whist. Dick, you're quite a godsend to a poor fellow. Look here, new
gloves--ain't had such a pair for a month."

"By the way," said Trevor, "is Vanleigh well off?"

"He was," said Pratt--"came in for a nice property. How he stands now I
can't say."

"And Landells?"

"Landells has a clear nine thousand a year; but I've seen hardly
anything of them lately. Poole dresses them; and how could you expect
such exquisites to seek the society of a man who wears sixteen-shilling
pantaloons, dines on chops, reads hard, and, when he does go to a
theatre, sits in the pit? By Jove, Dick, you would have laughed one
night! I did--inside, for there wasn't a crease in my phiz. They cut
me dead. I was sitting in the front row in the pit, and as luck or some
mischievous imp would have it, they were placed in two stalls in the
back row, exactly in front of me, so that I could inhale the ambrosial
odours from Flick Landells' fair curls the whole evening."

"Snobbish--wasn't it?" said Dick.

"Just half," said Pratt. "Landells is a good chap at heart; but society
is spoiling him. He came to my chambers the very next day, with a face
like a turkey-cock, to ask me if it was I that he saw at the theatre. I
looked at him out of the c