the flute on which he had learned to sound three sad notes before he left Guestwick, and, after the fifth or sixth Sunday, he had relinquished his solitary walks along the towing-path of the Regent’s Park Canal.  To think of one’s absent love is very sweet; but it becomes monotonous after a mile or two of a towing-path, and the mind will turn away to Aunt Sally, the Cremorne Gardens, and financial questions.  I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover’s mind if she knew the whole of it.

“I say, Caudle, I wonder whether a fellow could get into a club?”

This proposition was made, on one of those Sunday walks, by John Eames to the friend of his bosom, a brother clerk, whose legitimate name was Cradell, and who was therefore called Caudle by his friends.

“Get into a club?  Fisher in our room belongs to a club.”

“That’s only a chess-club.  I mean a regular club.”

“One of the swell ones at the West End?” said Cradell, almost lost in admiration at the ambition of his friend.

“I shouldn’t want it to be particularly swell.  If a man isn’t a swell, I don’t see what he gets by going among those who are.  But it is so uncommon slow at Mother Roper’s.”  Now Mrs Roper was a respectable lady, who kept a boarding-house in Burton Crescent, and to whom Mrs Eames had been strongly recommended when she was desirous of finding a specially safe domicile for her son.  For the first year of his life in London John Eames had lived alone in lodgings; but that had resulted in discomfort, solitude, and, alas! in some amount of debt, which had come heavily on the poor widow.  Now, for the second year, some safer mode of life was necessary.  She had learned that Mrs Cradell, the widow of a barrister, who had also succeeded in getting her son into the Income-tax Office, had placed him in charge of Mrs Roper; and she, with many injunctions to that motherly woman, submitted her own boy to the same custody.

“And about going to church?” Mrs Eames had said to Mrs Roper.

“I don’t suppose I can look after that, ma’am,” Mrs Roper had answered, conscientiously.  “Young gentlemen choose mostly their own churches.”

“But they do go?” asked the mother, very anxious in her heart as to this new life in which her boy was to be left to follow in so many things the guidance of his own lights.

“They who have been brought up steady do so, mostly.”

“He has been brought up steady, Mrs Roper.  He has, indeed.  And you won’t give him a latch-key?”

“Well, they always do ask for it.”

“But he won’t insist, if you tell him that I had rather that he shouldn’t have one.”

Mrs Roper promised accordingly, and Johnny Eames was left under her charge.  He did ask for the latch-key, and Mrs Roper answered as she was bidden.  But he asked again, having been sophisticated by the philosophy of Cradell, and then Mrs Roper handed him the key.  She was a woman who plumed herself on being as good as her word, not understanding that any one could justly demand from her more than that.  She gave Johnny Eames the key, as doubtless she had intended to do; for Mrs Roper knew the world, and understood that young men without latch-keys would not remain with her.