ith your scribbling. Your
time's valuable now. Set to and scribble away while you're the
fashion; make your 'ay while the sun shines, my boy. I'll see yer
through it. I want you to do me credit. I want everyone to know that
you're not like some of these poor devils, but have got a rich old
uncle at your back. You let 'em know that, will yer?'

And, quite in the manner of the traditional stage uncle, he produced
his cheque book and wrote a cheque for a handsome sum, intimating that
that would be Mark's quarterly allowance while he continued to do him
credit, and until he should be independent of it. Mark was almost too
astounded for thanks at first by such very unexpected liberality, and
something, too, in the old man's coarse satisfaction jarred on him and
made him ashamed of himself. But he contrived to express his gratitude
at last.

'It's all right,' said Uncle Solomon; 'I don't grudge it yer. You just
go on as you've begun.' ('I hope that doesn't mean "making more hits
at Humpage,"' thought Mark.) 'You thought you could do without me, but
you see you can't; and look here, make a friend of me after this, d'ye
hear? Don't do nothing without my advice. I'm a bit older than you
are, and p'r'aps I can give you a wrinkle or two, even about littery
matters, though you mayn't think it. You needn't a' been afraid your
uncle would cast you off, Mark--so long as you're doing well. As I
told your mother the other day, there's nothing narrerminded about me,
and if you feel you've a call to write, why, I don't think the worse
of you for it. I'm not _that_ kind of man.'

And after many more speeches of this kind, in the course of which he
fully persuaded himself, and very nearly his nephew, that his views
had been of this broad nature from the beginning, and were entirely
uninfluenced by events, he left Mark to think over this new turn of
fortune's wheel, by which he had provoked a bitter foe and regained a
powerful protector, without deserving one more than the other.

He thought lightly enough of the first interview now; it was cheaply
bought at the price of the other. 'And after all,' he said to himself,
'what man has no enemies?'

But only those whose past is quite stainless, or quite stained, can
afford to hold their enemies in calm indifference, and although Mark
never knew how old Mr. Humpage's enmity was destined to affect him, it
was not without influence on his fortunes.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A DINNER PARTY.