His hat was knocked over his eyes, and the statement of the problem ended in laughter.

With a good deal of difficulty they reached one of the southward byways; and thenceforth walking was unimpeded.

‘You know that I call myself Luckworth Crewe,’ resumed Nancy’s companion after a short silence.

‘Of course I do.’

’Well, the fact is, I’ve no right to either of the names.  I thought I’d just tell you, for the fun of the thing; I shouldn’t talk about it to any one else that I know.  They tell me I was picked up on a doorstep in Leeds, and the wife of a mill-hand adopted me.  Their name was Crewe.  They called me Tom, but somehow it isn’t a name I care for, and when I was grown up I met a man called Luckworth, who was as kind as a father to me, and so I took his name in place of Tom.  That’s the long and short of it.’

Nancy looked a trifle disconcerted.

’You won’t think any worse of me, because I haven’t a name of my own?’

‘Why should I?  It isn’t your fault.’

’No.  But I’m not the kind of man to knuckle under.  I think myself just as good as anybody else I’ll knock the man down that sneers at me; and I won’t thank anybody for pitying me; that’s the sort of chap I am.  And I’m going to have a big fortune one of these days.  It’s down in the books.  I know I shall live to be a rich man, just as well as I know that I’m walking down Dean Street with Miss.  Lord.’

‘I should think it very possible,’ his companion remarked.

’It hasn’t begun yet.  I can only lay my hand on a few hundred pounds, one way and another.  And I’m turned thirty.  But the next ten years are going to do it.  Do you know what I did last Saturday?  I got fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of advertising for our people, from a chap that’s never yet put a penny into the hands of an agent.  I went down and talked to him like a father.  He was the hardest nut I ever had to crack, but in thirty-five minutes I’d got him—­like a roach on a hook.  And it’ll be to his advantage, mind you.  That fifteen hundred ’ll bring him in more business than he’s had for ten years past.  I got him to confess he was going down the hill.  “Of course,” I said, “because you don’t know how to advertise, and won’t let anybody else know for you?” In a few minutes he was telling me he’d dropped more than a thousand on a patent that was out of date before it got fairly going.  “All right,” said I.  “Here’s your new cooking-stove.  You’ve dropped a thousand on the other thing; give your advertising to us, and I’ll guarantee you shall come home on the cooking-stove."’

‘Come home on it?’ Nancy inquired, in astonishment.

‘Oh, it’s our way of talking,’ said the other, with his hearty laugh.  ’It means to make up one’s loss.  And he’ll do it.  And when he has, he’ll think no end of me.’

‘I daresay.’

’Not long ago, I boxed a chap for his advertising.  A fair turn-up with the gloves.  Do you suppose I licked him?  Not I; though I could have done it with one hand.  I just let him knock me out of time, and two minutes after he put all his business into my hands.’