The health was drunk. Mrs Cruden looked at Reginald, Horace looked at Reginald, but Reginald looked straight before him and bit his lips and breathed hard. Whereupon Horace rose and said,--
"We think it very kind of you to drink our healths; and I am sure we are much obliged to you all for doing so."
Which said, the Shucklefords' party broke up, and the Crudens went home.
"WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?" SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY.
The two days which followed the despatch of the letter to "Omega" were long and anxious ones for Reginald Cruden. It would have been a great relief to him had he felt free to talk the matter over with Horace; but somehow that word "confidential" in the advertisement deterred him. For all that, he made a point of leaving the paper containing it in his brother's way, if by any chance the invitation to an additional £50 a year might meet his eye. Had it done so, it is doubtful whether Reginald would have been pleased, for he knew that if it came to selecting one of the two, Horace would probably pass for quite as respectable and considerably more intelligent a young man than himself. Still, he had no right to stand in his brother's way if fate ordained that he too should be attracted by the advertisement. He therefore left the paper lying conspicuously about with the advertisement sheet turned toward the beholder.
Horace, however, had too much of the _Rocket_ in his business hours to crave for a further perusal of it during his leisure. He kicked it unceremoniously out of his way the first time he encountered it; and when Reginald saw it next it was in a mangled condition under the stairs in the suspicious company of the servant-girl's cinder-shovel.
On the second morning, when he arrived at his work, a letter lay on his case with the Liverpool postmark, addressed R. Cruden, Esquire, _Rocket_ Office, London. In his excitement and haste to learn its contents it never occurred to him to notice the unexpected compliment conveyed in the word "Esquire"; and he might have remained for ever in blissful ignorance of the fact, had not his left-hand neighbour, the satirical Mr Barber, considered the occasion a good one for a few flashes of wit.
"'Ullo, Esquire, 'ow are you, Esquire? There is somebody knows you, then. Liverpool, too! That's where all the chaps who rob the till go to. R. Cruden, Esquire--my eye! What's the use of putting any more than `London' on the envelope--such a well-known character as you? Stuck-up idiot!"