'Yes!' he sighed, 'they have cost me thirty pounds, and guess how much I
have been offered for them?'

I suggested ten.

'Five,' groaned my poor friend. 'I tried several to get that. "H'm,"
says each one, indifferently turning the most precious in his hand,
"this would hardly be any use to me; and this I might have to keep
months before I could sell. That I could make you an offer for; what
have you thought of for it?" With a great tugging at your heart, and
well-nigh in tears, you name the absurdest minimum. You had given five;
you halve it--surely you can get that! But "O no! I can give nothing
like that figure. In that case it is no use to talk of it." In despair
you cry, "Well, what will you offer?" with a choking voice. "Fifteen
shillings would be about my figure for it," answers the fiend,
relentless as a machine--and so on.'

'I tried pawning them at first,' he continued, 'because there was hope
of getting them back some time that way; but, trudging from shop to
shop, with many prayers, "a sovereign for the lot" was all I could get.
Worse than dress-clothes!' concluded the frank creature.

For Narcissus to be in debt was nothing new: he had always been so at
school, and probably always will be. Had you reproached him with it in
those young self-conscious days of glorious absurdity, he would probably
have retorted, with a toss of his vain young head:--

'Well, and so was Shelley!'

I ventured to enquire the present difficulty that compelled him to make