requests, (1) to take a few five-shilling
tickets for a concert for the purpose of sending a deserving young
singer to Italy; (2) to purchase at a reduction a calf-bound set of the
_Encyclopaedia Cosmopolitana_ with which the owner, being short of money,
was reluctantly compelled to part, and which he, as an author, would
doubtless find it to his benefit to acquire; (3) to be present at the
banquet of a fellow author, departing for the old country, tickets one
guinea. Then there was one typewriting lady who offered to do his work
at so much a thousand words, and submitted a sample of her work. And
another typewriting lady, who submitted no sample, stated that reverses
of fortune had driven her from a high position in the best society to
the bitter one of a typist, and she was therefore compelled to solicit
his work to enable her to keep herself.

It was quite a pleasant change to discover two people merely wanted his
autograph. "Dear sir, I am collecting autographs and have 637; will you
please send yours by return post as I enclose a stamp."

"She encloses a stamp," murmured Hugh admiringly.

The other seeker accompanied her request with a perfervid letter of
praise about his work, but on the heavy autograph album that accompanied
the letter he noticed Kate had had to pay tenpence deficient postage and
there were no stamps enclosed for the return of the precious volume.

A jeweller's catalogue provided a few minutes' lighter reading, and its
diamond rings and its pearl and diamond necklets and pendants and
brooches were so temptingly illustrated, that they awoke the
present-giving instinct in the man's heart and he revolved the question
whether etiquette would permit him to give Dora and Beatrice a necklet
apiece for their pretty necks and Miss Bibby a chaste brooch. Kate, he
reluctantly remembered, cared nothing for jewellery.

But it was upon the last opened missive he wasted most of his
time,--possibly because it was the last and Chapter eleven looked large
on the horizon again.

It was an advertisement of enamel paint and was accompanied by a most
pleasing picture of a gentleman in a frock coat and a lady in a most
complicated costume, delicately engaged in making "better than new," by
the aid of this enamel paint, a whole bedroom suite.

Something in the elegant _neglige_ of the attitude of the gentleman in
the frockcoat depicted pensively painting the bedstead stimulated Hugh
marvellously.

He felt an i