His coat, which was originally a black walking coat of fashionable cut, had been for some months slowly turning green. Dicky laid it over a chair where it could catch the full effect of the sunshine, and retired a few steps to watch the effect.

"It's beautiful," he said, "regarded as an effort of Nature in her most sympathetic mood, and as something to talk about for people who've got what art critics call the 'vivid passion of sight." The coat is better altogether than Joseph's. No such depth of light and shadow could be got out of a coat of many colours. You want a single shade, such as green, growing out of an originally black ground, but in different gradations; a touch of green on a foundation of black, in places where the nap gets rubbed off between the shoulders-those Museum chairs do wear the shoulders shamefully; where it buttons across the chest, a pale green with a lustrous shimmer; where it's simply shiny, the right cuff for example, it's like a piece of imitation Bohemian glass; the deeper artistic feeling comes out in the folds of the tail as it hangs gracefully from the figure. If all the world were

artists; if everybody had the æsthetic eye of a— a-Nicolas Poussin, one would wear that coat with pleasure and pride. As it is, I should like to have a new one, and I can't get it."

He investigated his pockets one after the other. There was a penny in one, some loose tobacco in another, a pipe in a third, a pencil with some paper for notes in a fourth.

"I have heard-or did I read it once when I used to read books?-of a man who found a half-sovereign in his waistcoat pocket. Perhaps -no, there's no half-sovereign there. As for breakfast, I must go without. I shall be able to raise a couple of shillings from old Lilliecrip, I dare say. That will carry me through the day. Eleven o'clock, Lilliecrip at twelve, writing till three-nothing to eat till half-past, even if I do get the two shillings.

"Now if I had only not gone to the Harmonic last night-only not gone-my head would have been clearer this morning, and there would have been five shillings in my pocket instead of a penny. What's the good of a penny?"

He took it out and held it up disconsolately.
"A bronze penny. In the good old days, a

penny had its value; it was a good lump of copper; you could buy things with it. England has never been merry England since copper pennies went out."

The clock chimed the half-hour. He took his hat.

"I may as well go," he said. "There is not much to make one linger in this retreat."

He twirled his hat thoughtfully.

"What a hat for a gentleman and a genius! It was a Lincoln and Bennett once, and figured on the stage. I believe Toole played in it. Ah, it looked very different in its youth, I dare say. It was glossy and black, for certain; now it's shiny and brown. It used to be brushed regularly, no doubt; now it's a very dangerous thing to brush it. I am sure it must have had a stiff brim both before and behind; now it's so limp that it can't be taken off except from the top, like a priest's biretta. It was once of fashionable build-Lord! Lord! who would think so now? I should date that hat, I think, at 1860, or thereabouts."

He put it on his head, a little to one sidewhich gives, as every one knows, from the com

mander-in-chief to yesterday's recruit, a smart and even a rakish air; put up his note-book, felt for his pencil and keys, took from the corner a coloured cane-quite a gentlemanly cane, which was the pride of his heart, and which he handled as delicately as a Life Guardsman on a Sunday afternoon and went downstairs.

On the second floor he stopped, looked doubtful, shook his head, and tapped at the door. A voice replied, and he entered.

"You needn't trouble to ask me this morning, Mr. Carew," said a querulous voice; "I've got no money to lend, or to give, or to throw away."

The voice came from an easy-chair by the fireside, where a very old woman sat propped up with pillows.

"My dear madam," said Dicky, with the sweetest manner in the world, "I am sure I never thought of borrowing even a sixpence of you; I am only anxious to repay you the small sums which-let me see"-he produced his note-book-"it was-how much was it?"

"Three pound four and tenpence."

"Let us say, between friends, and to make it

round money, three pounds five," said Dicky, making a careful note of it. "My aunt from Westmoreland is coming to town, I expect, in a day or two. She will-"

"I don't believe you've got an aunt in Westmoreland at all," returned the lady in the chair. "Whenever you owe me money it's your aunt in Westmoreland."

'My dear madam," Dick replied, with unction, "is it possible you mistrust me, your old friend, Richard Carew? You must be unwell; you suffer this morning, poor dear. Let me shake up the pillows." He crossed the room delicately, and adjusted the cushions of the great chair in which the old woman sat propped. "Poor dear soul! And yet there's the look of youth in her eyes still."

"My

"Go away, do," said the old woman. granddaughter told me when she went to rehearsal this morning not to lend you another sixpence if you was to beg for it on your bended knees."

"I did not come to borrow," said Mr. Carew. 66 Can we not be disinterested for a moment in this world? You will not deny-come, now,