ld have taken a part, a most unwelcome
visit was paid to him. It was near eleven, and the breakfast things
were still on the table. He was at this time on a Committee of the
House with reference to the use of potted peas in the army and
navy, at which he had sat once,--at a preliminary meeting,--and in
reference to which he had already resolved that as he had failed so
frightfully in debate, he would certainly do his duty to the utmost
in the more easy but infinitely more tedious work of the Committee
Room. The Committee met at twelve, and he intended to walk down to
the Reform Club, and then to the House. He had just completed his
reading of the debate and of the leaders in the _Telegraph_ on the
subject. He had told himself how little the writer of the article
knew about Mr. Turnbull, how little about Mr. Monk, and how little
about the people,--such being his own ideas as to the qualifications
of the writer of that leading article,--and was about to start. But
Mrs. Bunce arrested him by telling him that there was a man below who
wanted to see him.

"What sort of a man, Mrs. Bunce?"

"He ain't a gentleman, sir."

"Did he give his name?"

"He did not, sir; but I know it's about money. I know the ways of
them so well. I've seen this one's face before somewhere."

"You had better show him up," said Phineas. He knew well the business
on which the man was come. The man wanted money for that bill which
Laurence Fitzgibbon had sent afloat, and which Phineas had endorsed.
Phineas had never as yet fallen so deeply into troubles of money as
to make it necessary that he need refuse himself to any callers on
that score, and he did not choose to do so now. Nevertheless he most
heartily wished that he had left his lodgings for the club before the
man had come. This was not the first he had heard of the bill being
overdue and unpaid. The bill had been brought to him noted a month
since, and then he had simply told the youth who brought it that he
would see Mr. Fitzgibbon and have the matter settled. He had spoken
to his friend Laurence, and Laurence had simply assured him that all
should be made right in two days,--or, at furthest, by the end of
a week. Since that time he had observed that his friend had been
somewhat shy of speaking to him when no others were with them.
Phineas would not have alluded to the bill had he and Laurence been
alone together; but he had been quick enough to guess from his
friend's manner that the ma