ark
Lane. He don't like it. None of them like it!"

"Don't they?" said Tony, not even vaguely guessing at whose prejudices
he was hinting, but feeling bound to say something.

"No, they don't," rejoined Mr. Darner, in a half-confidential way.
"There is such a deal of it,--fellows who were in the same 'eleven' at
Oxford, or widows of tutors, or parties who wrote books,--I think
they are the worst, but all are bores, immense bores! You want to get
something, don't you?"

Tony smiled, as much at the oddity of the question as in acquiescence.

"I ask," said the other, "because you'll have to come to me: I 'm
private secretary, and I give away nearly all the office patronage. Come
upstairs;" and with this he led the way up a very dirty staircase to a
still dirtier corridor, off which a variety of offices opened, the open
doors of which displayed the officials in all forms and attitudes of
idleness,--some asleep, some reading newspapers, some at luncheon, and
two were sparring with boxing-gloves.

"Sir Harry writes the whole night through," said Mr. Damer; "that's the
reason these fellows have their own time of it now;" and with this bit
of apology he ushered Tony into a small but comfortably furnished room,
with a great coal-fire in the grate, though the day was a sultry one in
autumn.

Mr. Skeffington Darner's first care was to present himself before a
looking-glass, and arrange his hair, his whiskers, and his cravat;
having done which, he told Tony to be seated, and threw himself into a
most comfortably padded arm-chair, with a writing-desk appended to one
side of it.

"I may as well open your letter. It's not marked private, eh?"

"Not marked private," said Tony, "but its contents are strictly
confidential."

"But it will be in the waste-paper basket to-morrow morning for all
that," said Darner, with a pitying compassion for the other's innocence.
"What is it you are looking for,--what sort of thing?"

"I scarcely know, because I 'm fit for so little; they tell me the
colonies, Australia or New Zealand, are the places for fellows like me."

"Don't believe a word of it," cried Darner, energetically. "A man with
any 'go' in him can do fifty thousand times better at home. You go some
thousand miles away--for what? to crush quartz, or hammer limestone,
or pump water, or carry mud in baskets, at a dollar, two dollars, five
dollars, if you like, a day, in a country where Dillon, one of our
fellows that's under-sec