"Nothing so far, Ben, my boy," answered a little old gentleman, who was methodically opening a pile of envelopes, and carefully scrutinizing the contents of each before arranging them in separate heaps. "Nothing much yet. A letter from a despairing mother, entreating us to find her lost son. Description given, payment—tick! Won't do. Here's a note from Mr. Wallis about his wife's being at the theater the other night, and a line from Jack Simpson about that woman down St. John's Wood way. Seems he's found her, so that's off."
"Humph! business is slack," remarked a younger edition of the old gentleman, who was standing on the hearth rug, with his silk hat on the back of his head, in an attitude of unstudied grace.
"Say, guv'nor, you couldn't let me have a fiver, could you? Must keep up the credit of the firm, don't you know, and I'm awfully hard up. 'Pon my word, I am."
"I couldn't do anything of the sort!" exclaimed the old gentleman testily. "Certainly not. The way you spend money is grievous to me, Benjamin, positively grievous!"
He turned round in his chair, and with his spectacles on the top of his head surveyed his son and heir with a sorrowful interest.
"Oh, hang it all, some one must spend the money if we're to keep the business at all!" retorted Mr. Benjamin testily. "I can't live as I do without it, you know; and how are we to get the information we want? Look at the company I keep, too."
The old gentleman seemed mollified.
"There's something in that, Ben," he remarked, slowly wagging his head. "There's something in that, of course. Bless me, your mother was telling me you was with a lord the other day!"
Mr. Benjamin expanded a little with the recollection, and smiled gently.
"That was quite true, dad," he remarked with a grandiloquent air. "I was just going into the Cri—let me see, on Tuesday night it was—when whom should I run up against but little Tommy Soampton with a pal, and we all had drinks together. He was a quiet-looking chap, not dressed half so well as—er——"