The second plan had more attractions, but my resources were now too low to allow me to put it into practice.

Therefore, having no other choice, I was forced to adopt the third, and, exercising that divine patience which characterises the Eastern nations but is so lacking in our own, to attend humbly upon fate until it should please it to deal to me a card that I could play.
In time fate dealt to me that card and my long suffering was rewarded, for it proved a very ace of trumps.

It happened thus.
About a year after I arrived in Dunchester I was elected a member of the City Club.

It is a pleasant place, where ladies are admitted to lunch, and I used it a good deal in the hope of making acquaintances who might be useful to me.

Among the _habitues_ of this club was a certain Major Selby, who, having retired from the army and being without occupation, was generally to be found in the smoking or billiard room with a large cigar between his teeth and a whisky and soda at his side.