"I haven't begun insuring yet," he replied. "I am looking about me."

     Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard's Inn. I said (in a tone of conviction), "Ah-h!"

     "Yes. I am in a counting-house, and looking about me."

     "Is a counting-house profitable?" I asked.

     "To--do you mean to the young fellow who's in it?" he asked, in reply.

     "Yes; to you."

     "Why, n-no; not to me." He said this with the air of one carefully reckoning up and striking a balance. "Not directly profitable. That is, it doesn't pay me anything, and I have to--keep myself."

     This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I shook my head as if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much accumulative capital from such a source of income.

     "But the thing is," said Herbert Pocket, "that you look about you. That's the grand thing. You are in a counting-house, you know, and you look about you."