old are you then, pray?"

"Why I'm thirty-four."

"What do you call that? I'm a hundred and three!" Mr. Longdon at all
events took out his watch. "It's only a quarter past eleven." Then with
a quick change of interest, "What did you say is your public office?" he
enquired.

"The General Audit. I'm Deputy Chairman."

"Dear!" Mr. Longdon looked at him as if he had had fifty windows. "What
a head you must have!"

"Oh yes--our head's Sir Digby Dence."

"And what do we do for you?"

"Well, you gild the pill--though not perhaps very thick. But it's a
decent berth."

"A thing a good many fellows would give a pound of their flesh for?"

Vanderbank's visitor appeared so to deprecate too faint a picture that
he dropped all scruples. "I'm the most envied man I know--so that if I
were a shade less amiable I should be one of the most hated."

Mr. Longdon laughed, yet not quite as if they were joking. "I see. Your
pleasant way carries it off."

Vanderbank was, however, not serious. "Wouldn't it carry off anything?"

Again his friend, through the pince-nez, appeared to crown him with a
Whitehall cornice. "I think I ought to let you know I'm studying you.
It's really fair to tell you," he continued with an earnestness not
discomposed by the indulgence in Vanderbank's face. "It's all right--all
right!" he reassuringly added, having meanwhile stopped before a
photograph suspended on the wall. "That's your mother!" he brought out
with something of the elation of a child making a discovery or guessing
a riddle. "I don't make you out in her yet--in my recollection of her,
which, as I told you, is perfect; but I dare say I soon shall."

Vanderbank was more and more aware that the kind of amusement he excited
would never in the least be a bar to affection. "Please take all your
time."

Mr. Longdon looked at his watch again. "Do you think I HAD better keep
it?"

"The cab?" Vanderbank liked him so, found in him such a promise of
pleasant things, that he was almost tempted to say: "Dear and delightful
sir, don't weigh that question; I'll pay, myself, for the man's whole
night!" His approval at all events was complete.

"Most certainly. That's the only way not to think of it."

"Oh you young men, you young men!" his guest again murmured. He
had passed on to the photograph--Vanderbank had many, too many
photographs--of some other relation, and stood wiping the gold-mounted
glasses through which he had been darting admiration