"'No, no, thank you, my dear kind friend, very much, but I have my prejudices, foolish no doubt, but insurmountable. Other men have not those prejudices, and will do your work better--far better. Thank you so very, very much. Good-bye. God bless you.'"

It was not in Kleinwort--who always loved hearing one Englishmen ridicule or anathematize another--to refrain from laughing at the foregoing sentence which the lawyer delivered with a solemn pomposity Mr. Asherill himself might have envied, and even Mr. Werner smiled at the imitation. But Mr. Forde, who could never see a joke unless he chanced to be easy in his mind, which of late was an event of infrequent occurrence, looked upon Kleinwort's merriment as unseemly, and telling him not to be an ass, took up the broken thread of conversation by remarking,

"I do not think Asherill will make any objection in this case. In the first place there is nothing doubtful about the transaction, and in the second place Mr. Samuel Witney, who is--in religion--a friend of his, and who has often done him a good turn, happens to be one of our directors."

"I should not feel inclined to place much dependence on either fact,"

said Mr. Benning. "But as I suppose you understand your own business--let us try Asherill. I have to attend a meeting of creditors, and shall not be able to see him to-day; but you," turning to Messrs.

Kleinwort and Werner, "had better do so, and take a note from me at the same time."

"I have got my own business to attend to," remarked Mr. Werner.

"And so have I in most good truth," echoed Kleinwort piteously.

"Well, attend to your own and Mortomley's also for to-day. After that I promise you shall be troubled no more about Mortomley or his estate." So spoke Mr. Benning, and his words recommended themselves to Henry Werner.

"On that understanding," he said, "I will do what you wish."

"I must stay here till twelve," pleaded Kleinwort. "After that, any time, anywhere."

"I will be here at quarter past twelve;" and having made this appointment, Mr. Werner bade good morning to the lawyer and the manager, and ran down the stone stairs leading from Kleinwort's office as if the plague had been after him.

"There is nothing more to say I suppose," nervously suggested Mr. Forde as the lawyer buttoned up his coat, and requested the loan of an umbrella.

"We are going to have a nasty day," he remarked. "I will send the umbrella back directly I get to my place. No. I don't think there is anything more to say. I understand the position, and hope everything may go on satisfactorily."

Mr. Forde buttoned up his coat, walked to the window, looked out at the sky, which was by this time leaden, and at the rain, which had begun to come down in good earnest. Then he grasped his umbrella, and after saying, "I shall wait at the wharf till I see you, Kleinwort," heaved a weary sigh, and departed likewise.

"My dear, dear friend, how I should like to keep you waiting there for me, for ever," soliloquised Kleinwort, in his native tongue, which was a very cruel speech, inasmuch as if Mr. Forde had any strong belief, it was a faith in Kleinwort's personal attachment to himself.

In moments of confidence indeed he had told those far-seeing friends whose confidence in the German was of that description which objects to trust a man out of its sight, "I dare say he is a little thief, but I am quite sure of one thing; he may swindle other people, but he will never let in ME." A touching proof of the simplicity some persons are able to retain in spite of their knowledge of the wickedness of their fellow-creatures. Faith is perhaps the worst commodity with which to set up in business in the City, since it is so seldom justified by works.

When Mr. Werner returned to keep his appointment he found Mr. Kleinwort, his coat off, a huge cigar in his mouth, busily engaged in writing letters.

"Just one, two minutes," he said, "then I am yours to command. Sit down."

"No; thank you. I will wait for you outside. I wonder what you think I am made of if you expect me to breathe in this atmosphere."

And he walked on to the landing, where Kleinwort soon joined him.

"I must have some brandy," remarked that gentleman. "I am worn out, exhausted, faint. Look at me," and he held up his hands, which were shaking, and pointed to his cheeks, which were livid.

Mr. Werner did look at him, though with little apparent pleasure in the operation.

"Have what you want, then," he said. "Can't you get it there?" and he pointed to a place on the opposite side of the street where bottles were ranged conspicuously against the window-glass.

"There! My good Werner, of what are your thoughts made? The spirits there sold are so bad no water was never no worse."

"I should not have thought you a judge of the quality of any water except soda-water," answered Werner grimly.

"Ah!" was the reply; "but you are English. You have inherited nothing good, imaginative, poetic, from your father's fatherland."

"If by that you mean I have no knowledge of the quality of every tap in the metropolis, you are right, and, what is more, I do not want to have anything to do with poetry or imagination if either assumes that particular development."

"We put all those things on one side for an instant," suggested Kleinwort, making a sudden dive into a tavern which occupied a non-conspicuous position in an alley through which they were passing, leaving Werner standing on the pavement wet as a brook from the torrents of rain that were at last coming down as if a second deluge had commenced.

When Kleinwort reappeared, which he did almost immediately, his cheeks had resumed their natural hue, and the hand which grasped his umbrella was steady enough.

"If I drank as much as you," commented Mr. Werner, "I should go mad."

"And if I drank as you so little I should go mad," was the answer. "You have got in your lovely English some vulgar saying about meat and poison."

"Yes, and you will have something which is called _delirium tremens_ one of these days if you do not mind what you are about."

"Shall I? No, I think not. When the engine has not need to work no longer, it will be that I lower the steam. Some day, some blessed day, I shall return to mine own land to there take mine ease."

"I wish to God you had never left it," muttered Henry Werner, and it was after the exchange of these amenities that the pair ascended to the offices of Asherill and Swanland, Salisbury House.

CHAPTER III.

MR. DEAN AND HIS FUTURE RELATIVES.

It was quite dark by the time Mr. Swanland's clerks reached Homewood on the rainy Saturday in question.

In the first place they lost their train by about half a minute, which was not of much consequence as another started in less than half an hour afterwards, but Mr. Bailey chose to lose his temper, and exchanged some pleasant words first with a porter who shut the door in his face, and afterwards with a burly policeman big enough to have carried the little clerk off in his arms like a baby.

The young gentlemen, engaged at a few shillings a week to perform liquidation drudgery in Messrs. Asherill and Swanland's offices, were so accustomed to regard the members of their firm as autocrats that they affected the airs of autocrats themselves when out of the presence chamber, and were consequently indignant if the outer world, happily ignorant of the nature of accountants, treated them as if they were very ordinary mortals indeed.

Having nothing to do for half an hour save kick their heels in that dingy, dirty, fusty, comfortless hall which the Great Eastern Railway Company generously offers for the use of the travellers on its line who repair to London Street, Mr. Bailey improved the occasion by delivering a series of orations on the folly of that old sinner Asherill, who detained them talking humbug till they lost the train, and having eased his feelings so far, he next proceeded to relieve them further by anathematizing Mortomley, who chose Saturday of all days in the week, and that Saturday of all Saturdays in the year, to take up his residence in Queer Street.

"I won't stand it," finished Mr. Bailey, while his eyes wandered over that cheerful expanse of country which greets the traveller who journeys by train from London to Stratford, as he nears the latter station. "I'll give them notice on Monday. They could not get on without me. I'd like to know where they could possibly find a man able to work as I can who would put up with such treatment. On Monday I will give them a piece of my mind they won't relish as much as they will their cut of roast beef to-morrow."

Which was all very well, but as Mr. Bailey had been in the habit of making the same statement about once a fortnight upon an average, since liquidation came into fashion, his companion attached less importance to it than might otherwise have been the case.

"What a day it has turned out!" was all the comment he made.

"Yes, and they are at home safe and snug before this, or on their way to it. Well, it is of no use talking."

"I wonder if we shall have far to walk," said the junior, whose name was Merle.

"Miles no doubt," answered Mr. Bailey, "and get drenched to the skin.

But what do they care! We are not flesh and blood to them. We are only pounds shillings and pence."

Which was indeed a very true remark, although it emanated from Mr.

Bailey. Had he been aware how exactly his words defined his employers'

feelings, he would not perhaps have been so ready to give utterance to them.