"Man, he's a marvel, yon felly!" observed James Nimmo admiringly. He was referring apparently to the editor of the "Searchlight."
—Who, not long ago, as regular students of the "Searchlight" will recollect, spent a very profitable two years raising the small sum necessary to enable him to make provision for his aged mother before leaving this country for good, in order to devote his life to spiritual work in a leper colony—a colony situated in an island so distant that I was ultimately able to prove, to the profound chagrin of Howard Glennie, that it did not exist at all. The name of Aubrey Buck, I may add, not does appear in "Crockford."
Uncle Joseph laid down the paper.
"And what do you think of that?" he enquired.
"We shall need to be getting another address," replied James Nimmo.
"We shall have to drop Aubrey Buck, too," said Uncle Joseph. "However, we can't complain. We have done pretty well out of him. Let me think. I know! We will turn him into a retired University Don with paralysis in both legs, who has to do typewriting for a living. He shall send an appeal for work to every lady novelist in the country. Their name is legion. In nine cases out of ten they will send money instead of manuscript."
"And if they do send manuscript?" enquired James Nimmo dubiously.
"We will keep it for a week," replied Uncle Joseph readily, "and then return it, accompanied by a manly but resigned letter announcing that the paralysis has spread to the Don's arms as well, and he supposes there is nothing for it now but the workhouse. That ought to bring in a double donation. Tell your brother to move from Commercial Road to Islington. We have never had an address there. Were the other places all right?"
While James Nimmo proceeded with his report Philip sorted the letters on the table. The conversation did not interest him—he was accustomed to it. But the editor of the "Searchlight" would have appreciated it keenly.
Presently James Nimmo departed, and Uncle Joseph and Philip went through their correspondence. The letters were arranged into three heaps. The first addressed itself to Master T. Smith, care of the Reverend Vitruvius Smith, 172 Laburnum Road, Balham. The other two were directed to The Honorary Secretary of the International Brotherhood of Kind Young Hearts, Pontifex Mansions, Shaftesbury Avenue, and The Reverend Aubrey Buck, Head Office, The Anti-Popery League, 374a Commercial Road, respectively.