for professional decoration.

His face, which was dark and somewhat plain, with large, strong
features, had a pleasant look on it as he turned to meet Mark. 'I'm
glad you could come,' he said. 'I thought we'd walk back together for
the last time. I shall be ready in one minute. I'm only getting my law
books together.'

'You're not going to take them out to Ceylon with you, then?'

'Not now. Brandon--my landlord, you know--will let me keep them here
till I send for them. I've just seen him. Shall we go now?'

They passed out through the dingy, gas-lit clerk's room, and Holroyd
stopped for a minute to speak to the clerk, a mild, pale man, who was
neatly copying out an opinion at the foot of a case. 'Good-bye,
Tucker,' he said, 'I don't suppose I shall see you again for some
time.'

'Good-bye, Mr. 'Olroyd, sir. Very sorry to lose you. I hope you'll
have a pleasant voy'ge, and get on over there, sir, better than you've
done 'ere, sir.'

The clerk spoke with a queer mixture of patronage and deference: the
deference was his ordinary manner with his employer in chief, a
successful Chancery junior, and the patronage was caused by a pitying
contempt he felt for a young man who had not got on.

'That 'Olroyd'll never do anything at the Bar,' he used to say when
comparing notes with his friend the clerk to the opposite set of
chambers. 'He's got no push, and he's got no manner, and there ain't
nobody at his back. What he ever come to the Bar for at all, _I_ don't
know!'

There were some directions to be given as to letters and papers, which
the mild clerk received with as much gravity as though he were not
inwardly thinking, 'I'd eat all the papers as ever come in for _you_,
and want dinner after 'em.' And then Holroyd left his chambers for the
last time, and he and Mark went down the rickety winding stair, and
out under the colonnade of the Vice-Chancellors' courts, at the closed
doors of which a few clerks and reporters were copying down the cause
list for the next day.

They struck across Lincoln's Inn Fields and Long Acre, towards
Piccadilly and Hyde Park. It was by no means a typical November
afternoon: the sky was a delicate blue and the air mild, with just
enough of autumn keenness in it to remind one, not unpleasantly, of
the real time of year.

'Well,' said Holroyd, rather sadly, 'you and I won't walk together
like this again for a long time.'

'I suppose not,' said Mark, with a regret that sounded a littl