‘Isn’t that rather an awkward name?’ pleaded Pitman.

‘Awkward?’ cried Michael scornfully.  ’It would hang us both!  Brown is both safer and easier to pronounce.  Call it Brown.’

‘I wish,’ said Pitman, ’for my sake, I wish you wouldn’t talk so much of hanging.’

‘Talking about it’s nothing, my boy!’ returned Michael.  ’But take your hat and be off, and mind and pay everything beforehand.’

Left to himself, the lawyer turned his attention for some time exclusively to the liqueur brandy, and his spirits, which had been pretty fair all morning, now prodigiously rose.  He proceeded to adjust his whiskers finally before the glass.  ‘Devilish rich,’ he remarked, as he contemplated his reflection.  ‘I look like a purser’s mate.’  And at that moment the window-glass spectacles (which he had hitherto destined for Pitman) flashed into his mind; he put them on, and fell in love with the effect.  ‘Just what I required,’ he said.  ’I wonder what I look like now?  A humorous novelist, I should think,’ and he began to practise divers characters of walk, naming them to himself as—­he proceeded.  ’Walk of a humorous novelist—­but that would require an umbrella.  Walk of a purser’s mate.  Walk of an Australian colonist revisiting the scenes of childhood.  Walk of Sepoy colonel, ditto, ditto.  And in the midst of the Sepoy colonel (which was an excellent assumption, although inconsistent with the style of his make-up), his eye lighted on the piano.  This instrument was made to lock both at the top and at the keyboard, but the key of the latter had been mislaid.  Michael opened it and ran his fingers over the dumb keys.  ’Fine instrument—­full, rich tone,’ he observed, and he drew in a seat.

When Mr Pitman returned to the studio, he was appalled to observe his guide, philosopher, and friend performing miracles of execution on the silent grand.

‘Heaven help me!’ thought the little man, ’I fear he has been drinking!  Mr Finsbury,’ he said aloud; and Michael, without rising, turned upon him a countenance somewhat flushed, encircled with the bush of the red whiskers, and bestridden by the spectacles.  ’Capriccio in B-flat on the departure of a friend,’ said he, continuing his noiseless evolutions.

Indignation awoke in the mind of Pitman.  ’Those spectacles were to be mine,’ he cried.  ‘They are an essential part of my disguise.’

‘I am going to wear them myself,’ replied Michael; and he added, with some show of truth, ’There would be a devil of a lot of suspicion aroused if we both wore spectacles.’

‘O, well,’ said the assenting Pitman, ’I rather counted on them; but of course, if you insist.  And at any rate, here is the cart at the door.’