This news completely drove all thoughts of ‘The Racket’s’ fate and the practice’s paltry takings out of Harry’s head. It came at exactly the right moment, as events so seldom do. And in a week he would be twenty-one.

‘I presume,’ said Mr Marriot, ‘that you will wish to invest this money. Invested in a safe security at five per cent, it would bring you in a hundred pounds a year. A very useful sum. Small, but useful. It would mean that you could not starve.’

‘Couldn’t live on it,’ said Harry.

‘Not in comfort, certainly, or for long, but it would tide you over a time like the present, for example, when you are out of work.’

Harry was silent.

Tiresome young cub, thought Mr Marriot, looking at his charming obstinate face. He knew perfectly well that Harry planned to secure the two thousand pounds and spend it. He knew it as well as though Harry had said so. And the lawyer had only a fortnight in which to persuade him to invest it. On September the first Harry would be twenty-one, and he could demand his money, and would have to have it; the law (confound it) would stand behind him and support his claim in face of all the sober advice of Mr Marriot and Uncle Preston. The law was like that, always magnificently sacrificing the particular on the altar of the general.

‘Would you like me to send you a list of suitable stocks in which the money might be invested?’

‘Thanks awfully. That would be a good idea, wouldn’t it?’

‘And, if I may say so, I advise you to get matters in hand quickly. Money has a habit of draining away before you know where you are.’

Harry agreed heartily with this remark.

He finally went away, however, with a cheque for twenty pounds in his pocket. It came from the proceeds of the faithful practice, not from the sacred two thousand pounds, but even so Mr Marriot felt a pang at giving it. He quite saw that Harry must have money to live on while he was looking for another job, but in what manner would he live? Lavishly, thought Mr Marriot gloomily. He found himself taking a personal interest in these three unusual young people, just as Mr Graby and the typists did in Francis. He still disapproved of them, but his imagination played about their youth and their forlorn state. He wished that they would all be sensible. But who ever was? And why should they be, with an heredity and an upbringing like theirs?

He sighed; and told his secretary to look out a list of safe, steady stocks and post it to Mr Harry Garden with an explanatory letter.

Harry took a bus home because he only had a shilling, and a cheque for twenty pounds which no taxi driver would cash.

The longed-for thing had happened. The practice was sold, and in a fortnight he would have two thousand pounds. For have it he would, and spend it, and damn old Marriot and Uncle Preston.