Press.  Quaverdale had quarrelled absolutely with his father, who was also a clergyman, and having been thrown altogether on his own resources, had come out as a writer for The Coming Hour.  He made his five or six hundred a year in a rattling, loose, uncertain sort of fashion, and was,—­so thought Harry Annesley,—­the dirtiest man of his acquaintance.  He did not believe in the six hundred a year, or Quaverdale would certainly have changed his shirt more frequently, and would sometimes have had a new pair of trousers.  He was very amusing, very happy, very thoughtless, and as a rule altogether impecunious.  Annesley had never known him without the means of getting a good dinner, but those means did not rise to the purchase of a new hat.  Putting Quaverdale before him as an example, Annesley could not bring himself to choose literature as a profession.  Thinking of all this when he received his mother’s letter, he assured himself that Florence would not like professional literature.

He wrote to say that he would be down at Buston in five days’ time.  It does not become a son who is a fellow of a college and the heir to a property to obey his parents too quickly.  But he gave up the intermediate days to thinking over the condition which bound him to his uncle, and to discussing his prospects with Quaverdale, who, as usual, was remaining in town doing the editor’s work for The Coming Hour.  “If he interfered with me I should tell him to go to bed,” said Quaverdale.  The allusion was, of course, made to Mr. Prosper.

“I am not on those sort of terms with him.”

“I should make my own terms, and then let him do his worst.  What can he do?  If he means to withdraw his beggarly two hundred and fifty pounds, of course he’ll do it.”

“I suppose I do owe him something, in the way of respect.”

“Not if he threatens you in regard to money.  What does it come to?  That you are to cringe at his heels for a beggarly allowance which he has been pleased to bestow upon you without your asking.  ’Very well, my dear fellow,’ I should say to him, ’you can stop it the moment you please.  For certain objects of your own,—­that your heir might live in the world after a certain fashion,—­you have bestowed it.  It has been mine since I was a child.  If you can reconcile it to your conscience to discontinue it, do so.’  You would find that he would have to think twice about it.”

“He will stop it, and what am I to do then?  Can I get an opening on any of these papers?” Quaverdale whistled,—­a mode of receiving the overture which was not pleasing to Annesley.  “I don’t suppose that anything so very super-human in the way of intellect is required.”  Annesley had got a fellowship, whereas Quaverdale had done nothing at the university.

“Couldn’t you make a pair of shoes?  Shoemakers do get good wages.”

“What do you mean?  A fellow never can get you to be serious for two minutes together.