ise looks--they knew each other so well now--that, while the telegraph-
boy, in his waterproof cape, made a great puddle on the floor, the thing
was settled between them. Pemberton wrote the answer with a pencil
against the frescoed wall, and the messenger departed. When he had gone
the young man explained himself.

"I'll make a tremendous charge; I'll earn a lot of money in a short time,
and we'll live on it."

"Well, I hope the opulent youth will be a dismal dunce--he probably
will--" Morgan parenthesised--"and keep you a long time a-hammering of it
in."

"Of course the longer he keeps me the more we shall have for our old
age."

"But suppose _they_ don't pay you!" Morgan awfully suggested.

"Oh there are not two such--!" But Pemberton pulled up; he had been on
the point of using too invidious a term. Instead of this he said "Two
such fatalities."

Morgan flushed--the tears came to his eyes. "Dites toujours two such
rascally crews!" Then in a different tone he added: "Happy opulent
youth!"

"Not if he's a dismal dunce."

"Oh they're happier then. But you can't have everything, can you?" the
boy smiled.

Pemberton held him fast, hands on his shoulders--he had never loved him
so. "What will become of you, what will you do?" He thought of Mrs.
Moreen, desperate for sixty francs.

"I shall become an homme fait." And then as if he recognised all the
bearings of Pemberton's allusion: "I shall get on with them better when
you're not here."

"Ah don't say that--it sounds as if I set you against them!"

"You do--the sight of you. It's all right; you know what I mean. I
shall be beautiful. I'll take their affairs in hand; I'll marry my
sisters."

"You'll marry yourself!" joked Pemberton; as high, rather tense
pleasantry would evidently be the right, or the safest, tone for their
separation.

It was, however, not purely in this strain that Morgan suddenly asked:
"But I say--how will you get to your jolly job? You'll have to telegraph
to the opulent youth for money to come on."

Pemberton bethought himself. "They won't like that, will they?"

"Oh look out for them!"

Then Pemberton brought out his remedy. "I'll go to the American Consul;
I'll borrow some money of him--just for the few days, on the strength of
the telegram."

Morgan was hilarious. "Show him the telegram--then collar the money and
stay!"

Pemberton entered into the joke sufficiently to reply that for Morgan he
was really