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II.
Nearly five years later, Michael Mosenstein, Esq., was sitting at the writing-table in the library of his town residence in Lancaster Gate.
He was reading a letter, and swearing softly under his breath at every line of it. When he had read it through for the second time, he crushed it up in his hand, stuffed it into his trouser pocket, went and stood on the hearthrug, with his short, sturdy legs wide apart, and said to a life-sized portrait of himself which hung in the middle of the opposite wall:
"No, bust me if I do! I've been generous to both of them, and I can't stick it any longer. I'll give 'em just another thousand apiece for old times' sake, and that's the lot.
