"They don't seem to have had no luck, any of them," was Leander's depressed conclusion.
"Aphrodite, or Venus, as you choose to call her, took a prominent part in the Trojan war, the origin of which ten years' struggle may be traced to a certain golden apple."
"What an old rag-bag it is!" thought Leander. "I'm only wasting money on him. He's like a bran-pie at a fancy fair: what you get out of him is always the thing you didn't want."
"No, no, Mr. Freemoult," he said, with some impatience; "leave out about the war and the apple. It—it isn't either of them as I wanted to hear about."
"Then I have done," said the old man, curtly. "You've had considerably more than half a crown's worth, as it is."
"Look here, Mr. Freemoult," said the reckless hairdresser, "if you can't give me no better value, I don't mind laying out another sixpence in questions."
"Put your questions, then, by all means; and I'll give you your fair sixpenn'orth of answers. Now, then, I'm ready for you. What's your difficulty? Out with it."
"Why," said Leander, in no small confusion, "isn't there a story somewhere of a statue to Venus as some young man (a long time back it was, of course) was said to have put his ring on? and do you know the rights of it? I—I can't remember how it ended, myself."
"Wait a bit, sir; I think I do remember something of the legend you refer to. You found it in the Earthly Paradise, I make no doubt?"
"I found it in Rosherwich Gardens," Leander very nearly blurted out; but he stopped himself, and said instead, "I don't think I've ever been there, sir; not to remember it."