personally—in addition to having other and grander designs for Min.”

“Ah, well,”—said Miss Pimpernell,—“we haven’t got to consider those other motives now; she rejected your offer, at all events, on the plea of your want of fortune?”

“Yes,” said I, mechanically, again.

“Then, that is all we’ve got to deal with, my boy,”—she said.—“Mrs Clyde is quite right, too, you know, Frank. You have got no profession, or any regular occupation. Let us see if we cannot mend matters. In the first place, are you willing to work? Would you like some certain employment on which you can depend?”—And she looked at me kindly but searchingly over her spectacles.

“Would a duck swim?” said I, using an expressive Hibernicism.

“Well, what sort of employment would you like?” she asked.

“Anything,” I replied.

“Come, that’s good!” she said.—“And what can you do?”

“Everything,” I said.

She laughed good-humouredly.—“You’ve a pretty good opinion of yourself at any rate, Master Frank, if that’s any recommendation:—you will never fail through want of impudence. But, I’ll speak to the vicar about this. I think he could get you a nomination for a Government office.”

“What, a clerkship?”—I said, ruefully, having hitherto affected to despise all the race of her Majesty’s quill drivers, from Horner downwards.

“Yes, sir,”—she said,—“‘a clerkship;’ and a very good thing, too! You need not turn up your nose at it, Master Frank; I can see you, although I do wear glasses! Grander men than you think yourself, sir, have not despised such an opening! Here is the vicar,”—she added, as her brother walked into the room.—“How lucky! we can ask him now.”

The vicar overheard her remark.

“Hullo, Frank!” said he; “what is it, that Sally and you are conspiring together? Can I do anything for you, my boy?”—he continued, in his nice kind way,—“if so, only ask me; and if it is in my power, you know that I will do it.”

“He wishes to get into a Government office; don’t you think you could help him?” said Miss Pimpernell.

“You want to be in harness, my boy, eh?”—said the vicar, turning to me.—“That’s right, Frank. Literature will come on, in due course, all in good time. There’s nothing like having regular work to do, however trifling. It not only gives you a daily object in life, but also steadies your mind, causing you better to appreciate higher intellectual employment! I thought, however, my boy, that you looked down on ‘Her Majesty’s hard bargains,’ as poor Government clerks are somewhat unjustly termed?”

“That was, because I thought they were a pack of idlers, doing nothing, and earning a menial salary for it. ‘Playing from ten to to four, like the fountains in Trafalgar Square,’ as Punch declares,” I said.

“Ah!” said the vicar, “that is a mistake, as you will soon find out when you belong to their body. They do work, and well, too. Many of the grand things on which departmental ministers pride themselves—and get the credit, too, of effecting by their own unaided efforts—are really achieved by the plodding office hacks, who work on unrecognised in our midst! Our whole public service is a blunder, my boy. There is no effective rise given in it to talent or merit, as is the case in other official circles. The ‘big men,’ who are appointed for political purposes, get on, it is true; but, the ‘little men,’ who labour from year’s end to year’s end, like horses in a mill, never have a chance of distinguishing themselves. When they are of a certain age, and attain a particular height in their office, they become superannuated, and retire; for, should a vacancy occur, of a higher standing in the public secretariat, it is not given to them—although the training of their whole life may peculiarly fit them for the post! No, it is bestowed on some young political adherent of the party then in power, who may be as unacquainted with the duties connected with the position, as I am ignorant of double fluxions! This naturally disgusts men with the service; and, that is why you generally hear Government offices spoken of as playgrounds for idle youths, who enter them to saunter through life—on the strength of the constituent-influence of their fathers on the seats of budding MP’s.”

“I really thought they never worked,” said I. “There’s Horner, for instance. You don’t suppose, sir, that he confers such inestimable benefit on his country by his daily avocations in Downing Street?”

“Ah, poor Jack Horner!” laughed the vicar; “he’s really not very bright. But, we need not be so uncharitable as to think that he does not do his money’s worth for his money! He writes a beautiful hand, you know; and, I dare say, his mere services as a copying machine are of some value. Government clerks do not all play every day, Frank:—you will, I’m sure, find plenty to do, if you go into office life. I remember, in the time of the Crimean war, that a friend of mine, employed in the Admiralty at Whitehall, used to have to stop up every alternate night at his office, the whole night through; and this was the case, too, at all the other public departments! The clerks in each room were obliged to take it in turn for night duty; while, those who were free to go home—and they did not leave work until long after the traditional ‘four o’clock’ on most days—had to specify where they could be found every evening, in case they should be suddenly wanted on the arrival of despatches from the seat of war. Of course this state of affairs is not ordinary; still, Government clerks are not idlers as a body:—on the contrary, you will find them thorough working-men.”

“Working-men!” ejaculated little Miss Pimpernell, raising her beady black eyes in astonishment to her brother, “why, I thought all working-men, properly so-called, were mechanics!”

“That is the radical politician’s view, my dear,” answered the vicar. “Let a man be apprenticed to a skilled trade, and carry a bricklayer’s hod, or a carpenter’s rule. Let him only wear slops and work in an engine-room, or use a mason’s trowel—so long as he does these things and receives his wages weekly, he is a ‘working-man;’ and, must have the hours of labour made to suit him, the legislation of the country altered on his behalf, the taxation of the public judiciously contrived to steer clear of him. He is the typical ‘working-man,’ my dear, of whom demagogues are always prating:—the fetish, before which so-called ‘liberal’ statesmen fall down and worship!

“But, your poor agricultural labourer, who lives in poverty, and dirt, and misery—starving annually on a tenth portion of the wages that the skilled mechanic gets—he is no working-man; oh no! Nor the wretched London clerk; he, also, is no working-man; nor the Government hack; nor the striving, hard-worked doctor; besides, many professional men and struggling tradesmen, who, for the larger portion of their lives, inch and pinch to scrape out existence!

“None of these are working-men; although they work harder—and for many more hours per diem than the mechanic—on, in most instances, a less income than the happy protégé of the radical law-maker gets by the addition of his weekly wages at the year’s end.

“And yet, the clerks, and the struggling tradesmen, and professional men, have to pay poor-rates and house-rates, and all sorts of petty taxes, from which the fetish ‘working-man’ is free; besides the income-tax, which never approaches him. The latter, often getting from three to five pounds in wages, can dress as he pleases, live in a single room for five shillings a week, pay no rates or taxes; and may, finally, disport himself as he likes—leaving off work whenever the fancy strikes him and resuming it again at his pleasure—without