“I don’t know how we should get on without him since we made ‘Pur’ daily,” said Lance.

“How old ambitions get realized!” said Geraldine.

“Does his mother endure the retail work, or has she not higher views for him?” asked Clement.

“In fact, ever since the first Lambkin came on the stage any one would have thought those poor boys were her steps, not good old Lamb’s; whereas Felix always made a point of noticing them.  Gus was nine years old that last time he was there, while I was ill, and he left such an impression as to make him the hero model.-—Aye, Gus is first-rate.”

“I am glad you have not altered the old shop and office.”

“Catch me!  But we are enlarging the reading-room, and the new press demands space.  Then there’s a dining-room for the young men, and what do you think I’ve got?  We (not Froggatt, Underwood, and Lamb, but the Church Committee) have bought St. Oswald’s buildings for a coffee hotel and young men’s lodging-house.”

“Our own, old house.  Oh! is Edgar’s Great Achilles there still?”

“I rushed up to see.  Alas! the barbarians have papered him out.  But what do you think I’ve got?  The old cupboard door where all our heights were marked on our birthdays.”

“He set it up in his office,” said Gertrude.  “I think he danced round it.  I know he brought me and all the children to adore it, and showed us, just like a weather record, where every one shot up after the measles, and where Clement got above you, Cherry, and Lance remained a bonny shrimp.”

“A great move, but it sounds comfortable,” said Clement.

“Yes; for now Lance will get a proper luncheon, as he never has done since dear old Mrs. Froggatt died,” said Gertrude, “and he is an animal that needs to be made to eat!  Then the children want schooling of the new-fashioned kinds.”

All this had become possible through Fulbert’s legacy between his brothers and unmarried sister, resulting in about £4000 apiece; besides which the firm had gone on prospering.  Clement asked what was the present circulation of the ‘Pursuivant’, and as Lance named it, exclaimed—-

“What would old Froggatt have said, or even Felix?”

“It is his doing,” said Lance, “the lines he traced out.”

“My father says it is the writing with a conscience,” said Gertrude.

“Yes, with life, faculty, and point, so as to hinder the conscience from being a dead weight,” added Geraldine.

“No wonder,” said Lance, “with such contributors as the Harewoods, and such a war-correspondent as Aubrey May.”

Just then the door began to open, and a black silk personage disconsolately exclaimed—-

“Master Clement!  Master Clem!  Wherever is the boy gone, when he ought to be in his bed?”

“Ha, Sibby!” cried Lance, catching both hands, and kissing the cheery, withered-apple cheeks of the old nurse.  “You see your baby has begun to run alone.”