O not think that all this time I had lost sight of my new friends, the fair-haired Dick Shafthead and the genial Teddy Lumme. On the contrary, we had had more than one merry night together, and exchanged not a few confidences. Very soon after I was settled, Dick had come round to my rooms and criticised everything, from Halfred to the curtains. His tastes were a trifle too austere to altogether appreciate these latter rather sumptuous hangings.

“They'll do for waistcoats if you ever go on the music-hall stage,” he observed, sardonically. “That's why you got 'em, perhaps?”

“The very reason, my friend,” I replied. “I cannot afford to get both new waistcoats and new curtains; just as I am compelled to employ the same person to get me out of jail and criticise my furniture.”

Dick laughed.

“You are too witty, mossyour.” (He came as near the pronunciation of my title as that.) “You should write some of these things down before you forget 'em.”

“For the French,” I retorted, “that precaution is unnecessary.”

For Halfred, I am sorry to say, he did not at first show that appreciation I had expected.

“Your 'bus-man,” was the epithet he applied behind his back; though I am bound to say his good-breeding made him so polite that Halfred, on his side, conceived the highest opinion of my friend.

“A real gentleman, Mr. Shafthead is, sir,” he confided to me. “What I calls a hunmistakable toff. He hasn't got no side on, and he speaks to one man like as he would to another. In fact, sir, he reminds me of Lord Haugustus I once seed at the Hadelphi; a nobleman what said, 'I treats hevery fellow-Briton as a gentleman so long as Britannia rules the waves and 'e behaves 'isself accordingly.'”

This may seem exaggerated praise, but, indeed, it would be difficult to exaggerate my dear Dick's virtues. Doubtless his faults are being placed in the opposite page of a ledger kept somewhere with his name upon the cover; but that is no business of mine. To paste in parallel columns the virtues of our friends and the faults of ourselves, that may be unpleasant, but it is necessary if we are to turn the search-light inward. Certain weak spots we must not look at too closely if we are to keep our self-respect; but, my faith! we can well give the most of our humanity an airing now and then; also, if possible, a fumigating. It was Dick Shafthead, more than any other, who took my failings for a walk in the sunshine, and somehow or other they always returned a little abashed.

A very different person was his cousin Teddy Lumme, for whom, by-the-way, I discovered Dick had a real regard carefully concealed behind a most satirical attitude. Teddy was not clever—though shrewd enough within strict limits; he was no moralist, no philosopher; an observer chiefly of the things least worth observing—a performer upon the tin-whistle of life. But, owing to his kindness of heart and ingenuous disposition, he was wonderfully likable.

His leisure moments were devoted, I believe, to the discharge of some duty in the foreign office, though what precisely it was I could never, even by the most ingenious cross-examination, discover. His father held the respectable position of Bishop of Battersea; his mother was the Honorable Mrs. Lumme. These excellent parents had a high regard for Teddy, whom they considered likely to make his mark in the world.

I was taken to the bishopric (sic), and discussed with the most venerable Lumme, senior, many points of interest to a foreigner.

Note of a conversation with Bishop of Battersea, taken down from memory a few days after: Myself. “What is the difference between a High Church and a Low Church?”

Bishop. “A High Church has a high conception of its duties towards mankind, religion, the apostolic succession, and the costume of its clergymen. A Low Church has the opposite.”

Myself. “Are you Low Church?”

Bishop. “No.”

Myself. “I understand that the conversion of the Pope is one of your objects. Is that so?” Bishop. “Should the Pope approach us in a proper spirit we should certainly be willing to admit him into our fold.”

Myself. “Have you written many theological works?”

Bishop. “I believe tea is ready.”

Afterwards further discussion on tithes, doctrine, and the Thirty-nine Articles, of which I forget the details.

My friend Teddy did not live at the bishopric with his parents, but in exceedingly well-appointed chambers near St. James Street. Here I met various other young gentlemen of fortune and promise, who discussed with me many questions of international interest—such as the price of champagne in foreign hotels, the status of the music-hall artiste at home and abroad, the best knot for the full-dress tie, and so forth.

Dick Shafthead did not often appear in this company.

“Can't afford their amusements, and can't be bothered with their conversation,” he explained to me. “Look in and have a pipe this evening if you're doing nothing else. If you want cigars, bring your own; I've run out.”

And, after all, learning to perform upon the briar-pipe in Dick's society under the old roof of the Temple, applauding or disapproving of our elders and our betters, had infinitely more charm to me than those intellectual conclaves at his cousin's, for six nights in the week at least. A different mood, a different friend. Sometimes one desires in a companion congenial depravity; at others, more points of contact.

This Temple where Dick lived is not a church, though there is a church within it. It is one of those surprising secrets that London keeps and shows you sometimes to reconcile you to her fogs. Out of the heart of the traffic and the noise you turn through an ancient archway into a rabbit warren of venerable and sober red buildings; each court and passage tidy, sedate, and, if I may say it of a personage of brick, thoughtful and kindly disposed to its inhabitants. This is the Temple, once the home of the Knight Templars, now of English law. In one court Dick shared with a friend an austerely furnished office where he received such work as the solicitors sent him, and was ready to receive more. But it was on the top flight of another staircase in another court-yard that he kept his household gods.

He had come there, as I have said before, during a period of financial depression, and there he had stayed ever since. I do not wonder at it; though, to be sure, I think I should find it rather solitary of an evening, when the offices emptied, silence fell upon the stairs and the quadrangles, and there were only left in the whole vast warren the sprinkling of permanent inhabitants who dwelt under the slates. Yet there was I know not quite what about those old rooms, an aroma of the past, a link with romance, that made them lovable. The panelled walls, the undulating floors, the odd angle which held the fireplace, the beam across the ceiling, the old furniture to match these, all had character; and to what but character do we link sentiment?

Also the prospect from the windows was delightful; an open court, a few trees, the angles of other ancient buildings, a glimpse of green turf in a garden, a peep of more stems and branches, with the Thames beyond. Yes, it was quite the neighborhood for a romantic episode to happen. And one day, as you shall hear in time, it happened.