A noise of breaking wood came from the passage. He was opening another case. His mother frowned at her miniature in the spoon she had in hand, and when he returned, brandishing a brace of Kaffir battle-axes, she would hardly look at them. 

 "I feel sure Wintour Phipps would take you into his office," said Mrs. Ringrose. 

 "I never heard of him. Who is he?" 

 "A solicitor; your father paid for his stamps when he was articled." 

 "An old friend, then?" 

 "Not of mine, for I never saw him; but he was your father's godson." 

 "It comes to the same thing, and I can't go to him, mother. Face old friends I cannot! You and I are starting afresh, dear; I'm prepared to answer every advertisement in the papers, and to take any work I can get, but not to go begging favours of people who would probably cut us in the street. I don't expect to get a billet instantly; that's why I mean to sell all this truck—for the benefit of the firm." 

 "You had much better write an article about your experiences, and get it into some magazine, as you said you would last night." 

 Indeed, they had discussed every possible career in the night, among others that of literature, which the mother deemed her son competent to follow on the strength of certain contributions to his school magazine, and of the winning parody in some prize competition of ancient history. He now said he would try his hand on the article some day, but it would take time, and would anybody accept it when written? That was the question, said Harry, and his mother had a characteristic answer. 

 "If you wrote to the Editor of Uncle Tom's Magazine," said she, "and told him you had taken it in as long as you could remember—I bought in the bound volumes for you, my boy—I feel sure that he would accept it and pay for it too." 

 "Well, we'll see," said Harry, with a laugh. "Meanwhile we must find somebody to accept all these curios, and to pay for them. I see no room for them here." 

 "There is certainly very little." 

 "I wonder who would be the best people to go to?" 

 Mrs. Ringrose considered. 

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