CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH.

AVING-STONES come to feel hard after walking about on them for twenty-four hours or so, no doubt." Frank said to himself as he strolled along the Embankment, looking in vain for a seat. A policeman passed him. "Now, who would be a bobby ?" he thought. "An awful time of it they must have. Yet I might put on the blue. I I could prosuppose cure a nomination. I might come down to that, and yet beNo; a gentleman drives a Hansom, or he enlists as a soldier, but nobody ever heard of a gentleman in the police force. Officers, it is true; but even a metropolitan magistrate has never yet complimented them on their gentlemanlike demeanour in the box. Prejudices are queer things. I confess-though I haven't many leftI have an objection to the force. Francis Melliship you must really aim higher than the police force,"

He pulled out his watch. It had stopped at half-past six. The key was at Islington. He looked up at the clock tower. It was a quarter to nine.

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"A quarter to nine. I am getting hungry again. Remarkable thing. I do not remember being hungry before 9 a.m. since I left school. My appetite is becoming serious and embarrassing. The wind,' as the old French proverb very prettily says, though King David and Sterne generally get the credit of it, is tempered to the shorn lamb. My experience is, that his appetite does not suit itself to his circumstances. Hang it, I must have some breakfast, and as well now as in an hour's time.'

He walked through the Temple into Fleet-street. In the window of a modest-looking coffee-house, an impracticable china teapot, surrounded by freshly cut chops and rashers of ham, gave notice to hungry men that breakfast was to be had within.

Frank took a seat in a box near the door, and ordered his meal; ate it with the greatest relish, and wondered if Dick Mortiboy was up, and whether he would be surprised if his cousin failed to keep his appointment with him.

Then he took up that wonderful chronicle, the advertisement sheet of the Times. Order in disorder, if you happen to know where to look for things. Frank did not; so he looked at every page but the right before his eyes caught the columns of Wanteds and Want Places. He read the list-the contents of which everybody knows perfectly well, because it never alters-with the curiosity of one interested. He was struck, of course, with that coincidence of people advertising for a place in terms that exactly suit the apparent requirements of people advertising for a person. Everybody has noticed this peculiarity, and novelists have made the most of it.

'Why don't they read this paper, apply for the vacant places, and save their money?" was his reflection.

Any number of cooks and clerks were wanted by advertisers; any number of "gentlemen," possessed of every possible qualification, advertised for employment for time, capital, or both.

There was not in the list one advertisement which seemed to fit his case. Stay, there was one-a secretary was wanted for an established public company. "A knowledge of the Fine Arts absolutely requisite. Preference will be given to a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge." Frank wrote down the address in his pocket-book. It was an Agency; and Frank Melliship had neither heard nor read, nor learned from experience, that of all the humbugs in a city full of them, Agencies of all sorts are the greatest humbugs. And the very cream of these swindles are Agencies that rob those poor wretches who, having tried every other method of getting employment, as a last resource enter one of these spiders' dens. I will give an example of their common method of procedure, which is representative. I will take a Servants' Agency to serve my purpose.

Here is a copy of an advertisement from the Times. You may see one similarly catching any day and every day :

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ENERAL SERVANT. Is a good PLAIN COOK. Has no objection to undertake washing. Fond of children. Age 24. From the country. Clean, active, willing, and obliging. Waits well at table. 3 years' excellent character. Wages £9." Mary," Mrs. -Street.

This advertisement appears in the Times, the Telegraph, and the Standard on the same day. The advertisements cost-say fourteen shillings altogether.

Now, how many poor innocent ladies do you think apply to Mrs. for that domestic treasure ?-poor women who have large families and little means: who can only afford to keep one servant; and perhaps, ever since they were first married, have been wanting that clean, willing, country girl who will cook the dinner and nurse the children, and all well for nine pounds a year, and have never found her. How many? I should not like to say.

Do you think there ever was such a "Mary"?

Never.

Apply to the advertiser. You may write to her, or go and see her. If the latter, she will smile affably, and tell you-what she will tell you in a letter, if you write to her—that it is most unfortunate, because somebody else has just engaged that particular "Mary." On payment, however, of a fee of half a crown, your name may be placed on the books of the Agency, and you will, doubtless-say in a week or two-be rewarded by having just such another phoenix of domestic servants transferred to your own kitchen.

Transparent traps to catch half-crowns. The sun shines. through ruses so clumsy. Very likely. But people won't see it. A proportion of the applicants-large enough to make the game at least remunerative-pay their half-crown in the certain assurance of getting a Mary exactly like the one who was so unfortunately ravished from their grasp. Of course, they never got her. Then the fool-trap is baited afresh.

Now, multiply Mrs.'s humble half-crown by eight. That makes a sovereign. The fee is one sovereign. Divide the number of applicants by any numeral you think will give you the truth as the result of this sum in simple division, and you will know how much Mr.- who flies at higher game, gets by his profession of not finding places for secretaries, clerks, ushers, and the rest, who want employment in this great city; always remembering that his most frequent quarry is the broken man who knows neither trade nor profession, but must have a gentlemanlike occupation: men who, like young Frank Melliship, are ruined; but who, unlike him, have no friend. Hundreds of these men have given a sovereign out of their last two or three to the Agent, and received in return

To find these men who want work and can't get it, who deserve well-yet, asking bread, receive stones: here is a field for charity!

Now let us return to Frank Melliship.

I have not called him the hero of my story, because he has done nothing heroic-because he seems to stand in the way of his own success; and with that noble object he has in view, to be wasting precious time only to earn an indifferent living.

Why does he not apply to John Heathcote? Why will he not be helped by his superlatively rich cousin, Dick Mortiboy? I will tell you why, for I want to paint him as he was. It was a point of pride: determination to show his independence of all those who, as he thought, ought to have saved his father from ruin, madness, and death.

"I will do without them. The world is wide. Energy overcomes all difficulties. 'Labor omnia vincit.'

Boys' copybook rubbish. It does not. "RES omnia vincit." It is capital that conquers all things, from a kingdom up to a

woman.

"To London and to Art." He had come to town something of an enthusiast. Where Art left him, we have seen. Was this the fault of Art? No.

He wanted long education and years of patient toil to paint even moderately well. This he did not know, and nobody but Kate had ever told him so.

Let us do him justice. He never thought himself a genius; but he believed in his energy, in his determination to succeed, and thought some way would be found by himself. He did not want to be shown the way, or to be helped by any friend of his prosperous days. His desire to be independent, and work his own way, was a sort of vanity; but it is not uncommon. I know a rich man who would rather earn a single guinea than that the goddess of Good Luck should shower a hundred into his pocket from the clouds. This was Frank's state of mind too.

He had made an entry of the address of the Agency in his pocket-book, and called the waiter to him; when the thought flashed across his mind that he had forgotten, when he ordered his breakfast, the emptiness of his pocket. He explained his predicament to the waiter, and offered to leave his watch with the proprietor. It was, he said, the only thing of value he had about him, except the guard.

The man saw he was a gentleman, and begged him not to trouble about the matter, but pay him any day when he was passing.

"It is the easiest thing in the world," thought Frank, "for a man who always has had money in his pocket, to walk into a shop and quite forget he has none."

He came to a pawnbroker's, and he thought he had better pawn his watch and chain at once. He must have some

money.

There was a shop window full of plate and jewellery; in a sidestreet was an open door-way, revealing a row of little doors. Frank guessed what these cabinets were, but he was some few minutes before he could make up his mind to go in. He looked at the costly things in the window-he walked past the doorway; at last, looking cautiously up the street and down the street, as if he were about to commit a burglary, and was afraid of the policeman who might be round the corner, he plunged into one of the little boxes, falling over an old woman who was haggling with the shopman for sixpence more than she had got last time on a pair of sheets.

Frank flushed in his confusion, apologized, and tried the next cabinet. This was empty; and here, trying to look as if he had often done it before, he put down his watch and chain on the counter with the grace of a roué, and waited his turn.

The man examined his watch, asked if it was in going order, weighed his chain, and smiled as he leered at him through his spectacles.

Frank, despite his efforts, looked so completely innocent. "How much ?"

Frank hesitated before he answered.

"How much will you lend me?"

"Tell me how much you want?"

"Well, a fiver."

"All right. These aint been in before, young gentleman.” "How do you know ?" asked Frank, blushing, and very much ashamed of the transaction he was engaged in.

We've got a private mark in the trade we put on everything that comes in," said the man; and Frank believed him. He began to write out the ticket.

"What name?"

"Must I give it?"

"Not unless you like. Any name 'll do. Mr. Smith, of Piccadilly, it generally is. Will that do?"

Frank nodded.

"Got fourpence? For the ticket, you know." The poor boy blushed scarlet.

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