s the world seem to nestle round you--the same
world that was so cold and haughty ten minutes ago. The world is a
courtesan, and has heard you have found a sovereign.

The gaslights seem beaming love at you. So near and bright are the
streets, you want to stay out in them all night; though you didn't relish
the prospect last evening. O sweet, sweet, siren London, with your golden
voice--I have a sovereign!

This, of course, was but the first rich impulse. The sovereign should
really be kept for the lodgings. But the snug little oyster-shops about
Booksellers' Row are so tempting, and there is nothing like oysters to
give one courage to open that giant oyster spoken of by Ancient Pistol.

I went in. I assured my conscience that it should only be
'Anglo-Portuguese,' and that I would forego the roll and butter. But
'Anglos' are not nice, Dutch are in every way to be preferred; and if you
are paying eighteenpence you might as well pay three shillings, and what's
the use of drawing the line at a roll and butter? No! we will repent after
the roll and butter. 'Roll and butter' shall be my Ebenezer. The 'r's'
have a notorious mnemonic quality. They will help me to remember.

So I sat down, and, fondling my sovereign in my pocket, fell into a dream.
When the oysters came I wished they had been 'Anglos' after all, because
my dream had grown beautiful and troublesome, and I had really forgotten
the oysters altogether. However, I ate them mechanically, and ordering
another half-dozen, so that the manager should not begrudge me my seat, I
turned again to my dream.

A young girl sat in a dainty room, writing at a quaint old escritoire, lit
by candles in shining brass sconces. She had a sweet blonde face, but more
character in it than usually falls to the lot of the English girl. There
was experience in the sensitive refinement of her features, a silver touch
of suffering: not wasting experience or bitter suffering, but just enough
to refine--she had waited. But she had been bravely happy all the time.

Pretty books filled a shelf above her escritoire, and between the
candlesticks was a photograph in a filigree silver frame. Towards this
she looked every now and then, in the pauses of her writing, with a happy,
trustful expression of quiet love. During one pause she noticed that her
little clock pointed to 8.30. 'Jim will just be going on,' she said to
herself. Yes, that photograph was 'Jim.'

A quaint little face it was, full o