“Dear me!” said Peter, suddenly; “I can almost fancy we’re back in our German garret, up the ninety stairs, can’t you?”

“No,” said Lancelot, sadly, looking round as if in search of something; “I miss the dreams.”

“And I,” said Peter, striving to speak cheerfully, “I see a dog too much.”

“Yes,” said Lancelot, with a melancholy laugh.  “When you funked becoming a Beethoven, I got a dog and called him after you.”

“What? you called him Peter?”

“No, Beethoven!”

“Beethoven!  Really?”

“Really.  Here, Beethoven!”

The spaniel shook himself, and perked his wee nose up wistfully towards Lancelot’s face.

Peter laughed, with a little catch in his voice.  He didn’t know whether he was pleased, or touched, or angry.

“You started to tell me about those twenty thousand shillings,” he said.

“Didn’t I tell you?  On the expectations of my triumph, I lived extravagantly, like a fool, joined a club, and took up my quarters there.  When I began to realise the struggle that lay before me, I took chambers; then I took rooms; now I’m in lodgings.  The more I realised it, the less rent I paid.  I only go to the club for my letters now.  I won’t have them come here.  I’m living incognito.”

“That’s taking fame by the forelock, indeed!  Then by what name must I ask for you next time?  For I’m not to be shaken off.”

“Lancelot.”

“Lancelot what?”

“Only Lancelot!  Mr. Lancelot.”

“Why, that’s like your Mary Ann!”

“So it is!” he laughed, more bitterly than cordially; “it never struck me before.  Yes, we are a pair.”

“How did you stumble on this place?”

“I didn’t stumble.  Deliberate, intelligent selection.  You see, it’s the next best thing to Piccadilly.  You just cross Waterloo Bridge, and there you are at the centre, five minutes from all the clubs.  The natives have not yet risen to the idea.”

“You mean the rent,” laughed Peter.  “You’re as canny and careful as a Scotch professor.  I think it’s simply grand the way you’ve beaten out those shillings, in defiance of your natural instincts.  I should have melted them years ago.  I believe you have got some musical genius after all.”

“You over-rate my abilities,” said Lancelot, with the whimsical expression that sometimes flashed across his face even in his most unamiable moments.  “You must deduct the thalers I made in exhibitions.  As for living in cheap lodgings, I am not at all certain it’s an economy, for every now and again it occurs to you that you are saving an awful lot, and you take a hansom on the strength of it.”

“Well, I haven’t torn up that cheque yet—­”

“Peter!” said Lancelot, his flash of gaiety dying away, “I tell you these things as a friend, not as a beggar.  If you look upon me as the second, I cease to be the first.”

“But, man, I owe you the money; and if it will enable you to hold out a little longer—­why, in Heaven’s name, shouldn’t you—?”