Not since the incident of the dressing-bag had Harry heard a word of Lowndes. He had no idea what had become of that erratic financier or of his daughter, and as to the former he no longer greatly cared. You may have the knack of carrying others with you, but it is dangerous so to carry them against their own convictions; a reaction is inevitable, and Harry had undergone one against Gordon Lowndes. In the warmth of the moment he had freely forgiven the pawning of his bag, but he found it harder to confirm that forgiveness on subsequent and cool reflection. And the visit to Guildford had something to do with this. It had replaced old standards, it had brightened old ideals; and the influence of Mr. Innes was directly antagonistic to that of Lowndes. Add the scholastic disappointments and the literary attempts, and it will be obvious that in the lad's life there had been little room of late for the promoter of the H.C.S. & T.S.A.

But of the promoter's daughter Harry Ringrose had thought often enough. His mind had flown to her in many a difficulty, and it was only his revised view of Lowndes which had kept him from going down to Richmond for her sympathy upon the fate of the manuscript for which she was responsible. Even this afternoon he had thought of her in the Underground, side by side with his mother, as the one other person whom he longed to tell of his success. So that it seemed little short of a miracle to find these two together.

Fanny had already been shown the first Tiddler verses, and she now shared Mrs. Ringrose's joy over the half-sovereign and the news of a second accepted contribution. It was delightful to Harry to see her kind face again, to see it happy, and to remember (as he suddenly did) in what trouble he had seen it last. And now he noticed that the girl was brightly dressed, with new gloves and a brilliant sunshade, and he could not but ask after her father and his affairs.

It appeared that the Highland Crofters' Salmon and Trout Supply Association, Limited, was still on the tapis, but under another name and other patronage. The Earl of Banff was no longer connected with the enterprise, but in his stead Lowndes had secured the co-operation of one the Hon. Pelham Tankervell, a personage who appeared to be on a friendly footing with the light and leading of both Houses of Parliament. This Harry gathered from a sheaf of most interesting letters which Fanny Lowndes had brought with her at her father's request. These letters were addressed to Mr. Tankervell by the most illustrious persons, nearly all of whom gave that gentleman permission to use their distinguished names as patrons of the Crofter Fisheries, Limited, which was the old Company's new name. It was difficult to glance over the letters without imbibing some degree of confidence, and it was plain to Harry that Miss Lowndes herself had more than of old. She told him that the Earl's solicitors had compounded with her father for a substantial sum, and she pointed to her gorgeous parasol as one of the cab-load of purchases with which her father had driven home after cashing the lawyers' cheque. It was plain that the little house on Richmond Hill was in much better case than heretofore; indeed, Fanny Lowndes told Harry as much, though she did add that she no more wished to see him Secretary of the Crofter Fisheries than of the H.C.S. & T.S.A.

"But you believe in it now?" he could not help saying.

"More than I did—decidedly."

"Then why should you dislike to see me in it?"

"You are fit for something better; and—and I think that after this Mr. Tankervell will expect to be made Secretary."

Harry was neither surprised nor vexed to hear it; but he was thinking less of this last sentence than of the last but one.

"You call writing for the Tiddler something better?"

"For you—I do. It is a beginning, at any rate."

Until her train went he was telling her of his prose flights and failures, and she was bemoaning her share in one of them. The High Street seemed a lonely place as he walked home to the flat. Yet the day was still the happiest that he had spent in London.

The third week he sent a couple of offerings to Tommy Tiddler, but only one of them got in. He tried them with two again. Meanwhile there was an unexpected development in an almost forgotten quarter.

After nearly a month's interval, there came one more thin envelope from the scholastic agents; and this time it was a Mrs. Bickersteth, of the Hollies, Teddington, who required a resident master immediately, to teach very little boys. Very little also was the salary offered. It was thirty pounds; and Harry was for tossing the letter into the first fire they had sat over in the flat, when his mother looked up from the socks which she was knitting for him, and took an unexpected line.

"I wish you to apply for it," said she.

"What, leave you for thirty pounds, when I can make twenty-six at home?"

"That will make fifty-six; for you would be sure to have some time to yourself, and you say the verses only take you an hour on the average. At any rate I wish you to apply, my boy. I will tell you why if they take you."

"Well, they won't; so here goes—to please you."

He sat down and dashed off an answer there and then, but with none of the care which he had formerly expended on such compositions. And instead of the old unrest until he knew his fate, he forthwith thought no more about the matter. So the telegram took him all aback next morning. He was to meet Mrs. Bickersteth at three o'clock at the agents'. By four he had the offer of the vacant mastership in her school.

It was the irony of Harry's fate that a month ago he would have jumped at the chance and flown home on the wings of ecstasy; now he asked for grace to consult his mother, but promised to wire his decision that evening, and went home very sorry that he had applied.

Mrs. Ringrose sighed to see his troubled face.

"Do you mean to tell me it has come to nothing?"

"No; the billet's mine if I want it."

"And you actually hesitated?"

"Yes, mother, because I do not want it. That's the fact of the matter."

Mrs. Ringrose sat silent and looked displeased.

"Is the woman not nice?" she asked presently.

"She seemed all right; rather distinguished in her way; but the hours are atrocious, and I made that my excuse for thinking twice about accepting such a salary. I have promised to send a telegram this evening. But, oh, mother, I don't want to leave you; not to go to a dame's school and thirty pounds a year!"

"You would get your board as well."

"But you would be all alone."

"I could go away for a little. Your Uncle Spencer has asked me to go to the seaside next month with your aunt and the girls. I—I think it would do me good."

"You could leave me in charge, and I would write verses all the time."

"It would be much cheaper to shut up the flat. Then we should be really saving. And—Harry—it is necessary!"

Then the truth came out, and with it the real reason why Mrs. Ringrose wished him to accept the cheap mastership at Teddington. She was trying to keep house upon a hundred and fifty a year; so far she was failing terribly. The rent of the flat was sixty-five; that left eighty-five pounds a year, or but little over thirty shillings a week for all expenses. It was true they kept no servant, but the porter's wife charged five shillings a week, and when the washing was paid there was seldom more than a pound over, even when the stockings and the handkerchiefs were done at home. A pound a week to feed and clothe the two of them! It sounded ample—the tailors had not even sent in their bill yet—and yet somehow it was lamentably insufficient. Mrs. Ringrose had been a rich woman all her life until now; that was the whole secret of the matter. Even Harry, ready as he still was for an extravagance, was in everyday minutiÆ more practical than his dear mother. She never called in the porter without giving him a shilling. She seldom paid for anything at the door without slipping an additional trifle into the recipient's hand. And once when some Highlanders played their bagpipes and danced their sword-dances in the back street below, she flung a florin through the window because she had no smaller silver, and to give coppers she was ashamed.

Harry was the last to take exception to traits which he had himself inherited, but he had long foreseen that disaster must come unless he could earn something to add to their income, and so balance the bread he ate and the tea he swallowed. And now disaster had come, insomuch that the next quarter's money was condemned, and Harry's duty was clear. Yet still he temporised.

"A month ago it would have been bad enough," said he; "but surely we might hang together now that I have got a start. Ten bob a week! You shall see me creep up to a pound and then to two!"

"You must first make sure of the ten bob," said Mrs. Ringrose, who had a quaint way of echoing her son's slang, and whose sanguine temperament had been somewhat damped by late experience.

"I am sure of it. Are not three weeks running good enough?"

"But you say they only take you an hour, and that you could spare at the school, even though you had to do it in your own bedroom. Besides, it need only be for one term if you didn't like it; to economise till Christmas, that is all I ask."

Harry knew what he ought to say. He was troubled and vexed at his own perverseness. Yet all his instincts told him that he was finding a footing at last—humble enough, Heaven knew!—on the ladder to which he felt most drawn. And a man does not go against his instincts in a moment.

"Come, my boy," urged Mrs. Ringrose. "Send the telegram and be done with it."

"Wait!" cried Harry, as the bell rang. "There's the post. It may be that my story is accepted."

He meant the story which never was accepted, but whose fitness for the flames he had yet to realise. The letter, however, did not refer to either of his prose attempts. It was from the Editor of Tommy Tiddler, enclosing both sets of verses which Harry had sent him that week, and very civilly stating that they were not quite up to his contributor's "usual mark."

Harry went straight out of the flat and was gone some minutes.

"I've sent that telegram," said he when he came back. "I should have told you that the term begins this next Saturday, and I've got to be there on Friday evening."