n.

But this morning a bright and new star swung into his ambit, when a
young man of about twenty years of age sauntered jauntily into the shop,
his hat stuck on one side of his head and a cigarette drooping from his
lips, where grew a moustache which must have struck envy into the soul
of Mr. Pemble. The new-comer winked cheerily to Jenks, nodded a "How
d'you do?" to the senior assistant, and then, to Henry's surprise, he
said:

"I suppose you're the chap that Mrs. Filbert's been telling me about.
We're both in the same digs."

"I beg your pardon!" Henry stammered.

"Same digs. Fellow-lodgers, don't you know."

"Oh! then you're Mr. Smith that Mrs. Filbert always talks about,"
answered Henry, brightening.

"That's me, my boy; but, if you please, Trevor Smith--with the accent on
the Trev. There's such a beastly lot of Smiths nowadays that a fellow's
got to stick up for his other name if he doesn't want to be buried in
the crowd."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Trevor Smith," replied Henry, who, it
will be seen, was beginning to know something of the social graces.

"Right you are, young 'un," said the breezy one. "I'm just back from my
fortnight's holidays. Been to London, don't you know. Jolly time.
Thought I'd give you a shout on my way to the office. See you later, and
tell you all about it. Ta-ta! I'm off. Big case on at the police court
this morning."

Mr. Smith--Mr. Trevor Smith, if you please--was indeed a person who had
assumed considerable importance in Henry's mind before he met him face
to face. He was the permanent lodger by whom good Mrs. Filbert set much
store.

"'E's that smart," she told Henry the first night he had stayed beneath
her roof "there's no sayin' what he don't know. He writes a many fine
things in the _Guardian_, specially 'is story of the Mop, which my Tommy
read out quite easy-like last October."

"He'll be a journalist, then," Henry suggested.

"Somethink o' the sort, I reckon. Leastways, e's a heditor or a reporter
or somethink. The _Guardian_ pays 'im to stay for it 'ere. So 'e must be
clever. Oh, you'll like 'im, 'Enry. Everybody likes Mr. Trevor."

It seemed to Henry a real stroke of fortune that had brought him to the
very house where one engaged in literary pursuits resided, and although
keenly disappointed at the melancholy falling off in his actual
experience of life under the aegis of Mr. Griggs, compared with his
vision of what that was to be, he now looked f