Front matter (continued 3)

The unhappy Quinney moistened his lips with a feverish tongue.

"What do you call a handsome figure, Mr. Lark?"

"Five or six hundred."

"And I paid nine!"

"Well, well!"

Gustavus turned his broad back upon the commode, and examined the Early Worcester in the Chippendale cabinet. There was a tea-set of the Dr. Wall period, bearing the much-prized square mark, some thirty pieces of scale-blue with flowers delicately painted in richly-gilded panels.

"Is that scale-blue for sale?"

"At a price, Mr. Lark. I have had it for three years. I'm waiting for a customer who will give me two hundred pounds, not a penny less."

"Two hundred pounds? And you won't sell to the dealers who have customers who write such big cheques. Now, look here, Mr. Quinney, I am sorry for you. I know how you feel, because I have made, I repeat, sad and costly blunders myself. You don't ask enough for that scale-blue."

"Not enough?"

"I could sell that set for three hundred this afternoon. To prove that I am not boasting I will offer you two hundred guineas, cash on the nail."

"Done!" said Quinney. He added excitedly: "I'm much obliged, Mr. Lark. I wish you could send me the American gentleman."

Gustavus laughed. He looked at Quinney with quite a paternal air.

"Come, come, isn't that asking too much?"

"I beg pardon, of course it is, but what am I to do about that commode?"

"I repeat—sell it."

"You know that I haven't a dog's chance of selling it now. Don't flimflam me, Mr. Lark! You're too big a man, too good a sort. You've treated me handsomely over that scale-blue. Now help me out of this hole, if you can."

Lark nodded impressively. He went back to the commode, and examined it meticulously, opening and shutting the doors, looking at the back, scraping the paint of the panels with the point of a penknife. Then the oracle spoke portentously:

"I never haggle with dealers, Mr. Quinney, and I don't want that commode; but, to oblige you, I'll give you five hundred for it, and chance making a hundred profit."

"Make it six hundred, Mr. Lark."

"I repeat—I never haggle."

"Damn it! I must cut a loss."

"Always the wise thing to do. My offer holds good for twenty-four hours. Isn't Tomlin a friend of yours?"

"We've had many dealings together."

"He might pay more."

"Not he. I'll accept your offer, Mr. Lark, with many thanks. I'll not forget this."

Gustavus returned to Oxford Street. He sold the commode to an American millionaire for two thousand five hundred pounds, but Quinney, fortunately for his peace of mind, never discovered this till some years had passed.

He told Tom Tomlin that Lark was a perfect gentleman, and that the story of the Rapper and the London "Cries" was a malicious lie on the face of it.

Tomlin sniffed.

CHAPTER XI

MORE BLUDGEONINGS

I

The loss of four hundred pounds stimulated our hero to greater efforts. Deep down in his heart, moreover, lay the desire to rehabilitate himself. Susan had spared him exasperating reproaches, but he perceived, so he fancied, pity in her faithful eyes. Her ministrations recalled that humiliating Channel crossing, when his superiority as a male had been buried in a basin! Let us admit that he wanted to play the god with Susan, to shake the sphere of home with his Olympian nod, to hear her soft ejaculation: "Joe, dear, you are wonderful!"

At this crisis in his fortunes he found himself, for the first time in his life, with time on his hands. His premises were overstocked to such an extent that he dared not run the temptation of attending sales. To succeed greatly, he only needed customers, and they shunned him as if Soho Square were an infected district.

It began to strike him that he had embarked upon a highly speculative business. Tomlin was clear upon this point.

"It's a gamble if you go for big things. Buying that commode was a gamble. You can't escape from it. That's what makes it interesting. Win a tidy bit here, lose a tidy bit there, and it's all the same a hundred years hence."

This familiar philosophy percolated through Quinney's mind. It never occurred to him that he could be called a gambler, and yet something in him thrilled at the name. He heard Tomlin's platitudes, and wondered why he had never thought of them before.

"Farming's gambling—a mug's game! Sooner put my money on to a horse than into the ground! Marriage! The biggest gamble of all! You struck a winner, my lad—I didn't."

"I suppose," said Quinney, staring hard at Tomlin, "that you don't gamble outside your business?"

"Yes, I do, when I get a gilt-edged tip."

"Race-horses?"

"Stock Exchange. Customers tell me things. I'm fairly in the know, I am. Make a little bit, lose a little bit! It binges me up when I feel blue."

"I'd like to get back a slice o' that lost four hundred quid."

"Maybe I can help you to do it. A customer of mine is in the Kaffir Market."

"Kaffir Market! What's that?"

It has been said that Quinney was grossly ignorant of things outside his own business.

"If you ain't as innocent as Moses in the bulrushes! African Mines, you greenhorn! He tells me of things. Never let me down—not once. He says a boom is just due."

"Do you risk much, Tom?"

"Lord bless you, no! I buy a few likely shares on margin, and carry 'em over. A man must have some excitement."

"Yes," said Quinney thoughtfully, "he must."

He did not mention this talk to Susan, but as he kicked his heels waiting for customers, the necessity of excitement—any excitement—gripped at his vitals. Meanwhile, let it be placed to his credit that he resisted the daily temptation to sell stuff to dealers. He could have sold his treasures to Lark at a fine profit, but he remained true to the principle: keep your best things to attract private customers. He hoped that his kind patron, Lord Mel, would come to see him. Possibly his lordship was offended, because his advice had been spurned. Then he heard that Lord Mel was abroad, and not likely to return to England for several months. He missed the bi-weekly meetings at the Mitre, and he did not dare to tell his Susan that he was depressed and dull, because he dreaded the inevitable "I told you so." Susan missed her few friends, and Quinney strained his powers of deception in the attempt to cheer her up by affirming that he had bettered his position by leaving Melchester.

Many wise persons contend that if you want anything inordinately, you get it. Excitement came to Quinney when he least expected it.

II

Hitherto adventurers of the first flight had left him alone. Small imposters are easily detected. Nobody could deal with the baser sort of trickster more drastically than Quinney. Rappers, for example, rapped in vain at his door. If he opened it, they never crossed the threshold. But when a provincial pigeon, preening his wings, is discovered within a stone's throw of the Greek quarter in London, some fancier is likely to make an attempt to bag the bird. Such a one entered Quinney's establishment some three months after the lamentable sale of the commode. He appeared to be a quiet, well-dressed man, and he wore a single pearl in his cravat, which inspired confidence. He asked Quinney if he ever attended sales as an agent, to buy things on the usual commission. Quinney had acted as agent for Lord Mel upon several occasions, and we may pardon him for mentioning the fact to the stranger, who seemed mildly impressed. He remarked casually that he knew Lord Mel, and had shot some high pheasants at Mel Court. Quinney, in his turn, was impressed by this information, for he knew that Lord Mel was nice in his selection of guests. Eventually Quinney consented to attend a certain sale, and to bid for two Dutch pictures which the stranger had marked in a catalogue.

"This is my card," said the stranger. "I shall be happy to give you a banker's reference." He named a well-known bank, but Quinney was quite satisfied with the name and address on the card. His visitor was an army officer, a Major Fraser, and he belonged to a famous Service Club.

Somewhat to his disappointment, the two Dutch pictures fetched a price beyond the limit imposed by the Major, who dropped in next day and expressed his regrets. He was so civil and genial that Quinney hoped to have the honour of serving him on some future occasion. The Major glanced at the sanctuary and before leaving paid ten pounds for a small Bow figure, and ordered it to be sent to the Savoy Hotel. After he had gone, Quinney found a letter addressed to Major Archibald Fraser, of Loch Tarvie, Inverness, N.B. He sent back the letter with the Bow figure, and he was curious enough to look up Major Archibald Fraser in Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed, and Official Classes. He discovered, to his satisfaction, that the Major owned two properties in Scotland, and was a Justice of the Peace. He had married the daughter of a well-known Scotch magnate. Quinney chuckled and rubbed his hands. The right sort were finding their way to Soho Square at last. After this the Major dropped in again and again, always in search of knowledge, which Quinney supplied with increasing pleasure. In a word, the pigeon was ready for plucking.

During his next visit the Major spoke with enthusiasm of a picture he had discovered in Dorset. He assured Quinney that the picture was a genuine Murillo. Then he pulled a bundle of notes out of his pocket, handed twenty pounds to Quinney, and delivered the following speech:

"I must go to Inverness to-night," he said regretfully. "My factor has wired for me about the letting of a forest of mine. Take this money on account of expenses, go to Dorchester, do yourself well—there is an excellent inn there, and a few bottles left of some '68 port. To-morrow there will be a sale at a small auction mart in the town. This picture will be offered. Here's a photograph of it. Buy it for me. In three days I shall be back in town."

He was hurrying away when Quinney stopped him. Queer notions of business these army gentlemen had, to be sure!

"What am I to bid for the picture, Major?"

"I'll go to fifteen hundred. I shouldn't be furious if you paid a hundred more. Wire to Loch Tarvie! Bye-bye!"

He was away before Quinney could get in another word.

"Thruster, and no error!" murmured Quinney to himself.

He travelled to Dorchester that afternoon and paid a visit to the auction mart before dinner. The auctioneer knew him, and expressed surprise at seeing him, for he was selling only job lots.

"Nothing to interest you, Mr. Quinney."

"Perhaps not. I'll have a squint round as I am here."

The auctioneer accompanied him, and Quinney soon found his picture, which was very dirty and inconspicuous. Old masters were not in his line, but he recognized the frame at once as being genuine—a fine specimen of carved wood, although much battered. The auctioneer said carelessly:

"I had a gentleman staring at that picture this morning. You're after the frame, I dare say."

Quinney made no reply. He saw that a small portion of the dirty canvas had been rubbed.

"Might look quite different if it was cleaned," said the auctioneer. "The other fellow did that with his handkerchief and a small bottle of stuff he carried in his pocket. I didn't like to object. Colour comes out nicely!"

"Who does it belong to?"

"A stranger to me. I take everything as it comes. I'm in a small way of business, as you know, Mr. Quinney; but some nice stuff has passed through my hands."

He plunged into an ocean of reminiscences, punctuating his remarks with lamentations of ignorance.

"If I really knew. Suppose it's a gift. You have it, Mr. Quinney. I have a sort of general knowledge of values, but it's the special knowledge that picks up the big bargains."

Quinney returned to his hotel.

At the auction next day two or three country dealers, small men, with whom he had a nodding acquaintance, were bidding. The gentleman who was interested in the picture was present also, languidly indifferent to the proceedings. However, he became animated when the picture was put up as "a valuable Madonna and Child, the work of an old master." The gentleman bid a hundred for it, apparently to the surprise of the small dealers.

"One hundred and twenty-five," said Quinney.

The gentleman bent down to whisper a word to a man who stood next him, and then he stared hard at Quinney, with a slight frown upon his smooth forehead.

"One hundred and fifty," he said quietly.

Finally Quinney secured the picture for eleven hundred pounds, well pleased at having secured it so cheap. The rival bidder led him aside.

"You are the famous dealer, Joseph Quinney?"

Quinney smiled complacently. The gentleman continued in a whisper:

"I expected to get that picture for a hundred pounds. You have fairly outbidden me, and I could not bid a farthing more to-day; but will you kindly tell me what you will take for your bargain?"

"Sorry," said Quinney; "but I bought it on a commission for a well-known collector."

"There is no more to be said," replied the other.

He nodded pleasantly and vanished. Quinney never saw him again. Nor did he see Major Archibald Fraser. Quinney paid the auctioneer with a cheque, and returned to London, after wiring the Major that the treasure was his. Three days later, not hearing a word from his client, he became slightly uneasy. His cheque had been cashed; the picture was in his possession. The abominable truth leaked out slowly. Major Archibald Fraser, of Loch Tarvie, had been impersonated by a chevalier d'industrie. The picture was worth, perhaps, forty pounds, and the frame another five-and-twenty!

The pigeon from the country had been plucked.

III

The poor fellow sobbed out the facts to his Susan in a passion of self-abasement. The loss of the money was serious enough, but what ground him to powder was the fact that he had become the laughing-stock of the London dealers. Every man jack of them knew. He could not show his face in an auction room without provoking spasms of raucous laughter. The Dorchester auctioneer, called upon to prove his innocence (which he did), made the tale public. It was acclaimed as "copy" by scores of newspapers. And salt was rubbed into his wounds by the reporters whose sympathy seemed to lie with the two scoundrels who had devised so clever a scheme, and escaped with the swag! There was a cruel headline: "A Biter Bit."

"Whom have I bit?" he demanded of Susan.

The little woman mingled her tears with his, but no words of hers could assuage his misery or stem the torrent of self-accusation.

"Nice sort of fool you've married! A mug of mugs! You was right. Ought to have remained in Melchester! Ought to have remained in swaddling clothes! Ought never to have been born!"

He apostrophized Posy, now a child of ten.

"Nice sort of father you've got! Look at him! Why didn't you choose somebody else, hey? Picked a wrong'un, you did!"

Posy lifted her young voice and wept with her parents. And then Susan, almost hysterical, said with unconscious humour:

"Gracious! Isn't this a rainy afternoon!"

IV

After a few days the sun shone again. Lord Mel, who had returned to England, called upon his former tenant, and listened with sympathy to the tale of thwackings. Quinney added details which he had kept from Susan. Fired by Tomlin, he had ventured into the Kaffir Market, where the bears had mauled him. His losses, fortunately, were inconsiderable; but once again he had been "downed" by Londoners. He was too proud to whine before Lord Mel, and from long habit he expressed himself whimsically.

"Not fit to cross the road without a policeman. Time I advertised for a nurse or a keeper!"

"Are you thinking of going back to Melchester?"

At this Quinney exploded.

"My lord, I couldn't face Pinker, and Mrs. Biddlecombe would cackle and nag at me till I wrung her neck. She wrote to Susan to say that she was sorry to hear that the Lord had seen fit to afflict me grievously. In her heart she's glad."

"You don't blame the Lord?"

"I blame myself. I've been a silly daw, strutting about like a peacock. I wanted a fight, and I've had it; but I can't go back to Melchester. I must stick it out here, win or lose, customers or no customers. If the worst comes to the worst, I can sell to dealers. It means slavery."

"But you have some customers?"

"Very few—the wrong sort. Mostly women, who don't value their own time or mine. They look at my stuff, and call it 'rather nice'; they try to pick up a few wrinkles about glass and porcelain, and then they drift out, promising to call again."

"We must try to alter this."

"It does me good to see your lordship's face again."

Lord Mel bought a table and some Irish glass. He shook Quinney's hand at parting genially.

"You've had a dose. Perhaps your system needed it. Pay my respects to Mrs. Quinney, and tell her not to worry."

Quinney ran upstairs to Susan.

"Lord Mel's been in. Sent his respects to you. You're not to worry—see?"

"I am not worrying much, Joe. Nobody escapes hard times."

"His lordship has faith in me. He ain't offended. Just the same as ever. I told him everything—more than I told you."

"More than you told me?"

"I lost a few hundreds dabbling in mines. All that foolishness is over and done with. I mean to stick to what I know, and the people I know who'll stick to me. I shall give my undivided attention to business. I mean to work harder than ever, so as to win back what I've lost."

"How much have you lost, dear?"

"I'm not speakin' of money, Susie. I've lost my self-respect, and I don't stand with you just where I did."

"You do—you know you do!"

He shook his head obstinately.

"I know I don't. You ain't suffering from a crick in the neck along of lookin' up at me. I ain't been soaring lately. Wriggling like a crushed worm about fits me."

"Joe, dear, you've never quite understood me."

"Hey?"

"I married you for better or worse."

He stared at her amazedly.

"Lawsy! It never entered into your pretty head that it could be for worse?"

"I should love you just the same if it were."

"No, no, that ain't sense, Susie. It won't wash. You loved me because I was Joe Quinney—a feller with ambitions, a worker, a man with brains in his head. If I failed you, I should expect you to despise me. I should feel that I'd had you under false pretences."

Susan smiled very faintly. Her voice was curiously incisive:

"You have a lot to learn yet, Joe, about persons."

CHAPTER XII

POSY

I

Lord Mel sent many customers to Soho Square. He felt sincerely sorry for the little man, and told everybody that he was a fighter and a striver, and "straight." Within a few months Quinney became the Quinney of old, full of enthusiasm and swagger, exuding energy, quite confident that he was soaring and likely to become a spire! An American millionaire one morning made a clean sweep of half the treasures in the sanctuary. Orders to furnish rooms in a given style with first-class reproductions came joyously to hand, and were executed promptly and at a reasonable price.

In due time, also, he became a member of the inner ring of big dealers. They tried to "freeze him out" by inflating prices, often at a serious loss to themselves, but eventually they were constrained to admit that the Melchester man was too shrewd for them, with a knowledge of values which seemed to have fallen upon him like the dew from heaven. At any moment he might stop bidding with an abruptness very disconcerting to the older men, leaving them with the lapin which they were trying to impose upon him.

In those early days he found the Caledonian market a happy hunting-ground, securing immense quantities of Georgian steel fire-irons, fenders, and dog-grates, at that time in no demand. He stored them in his immense cellars, covering them with a villainous preparation of his own which defied rust.

"Good stuff to lay down," he remarked.

Afterwards the big dealers asked him how he had contrived to foresee the coming demand for old cut glass. Of this he had bought immense quantities also. He answered them in his own fashion.

"Can you tell me why one breed of dog noses out truffles?"

He bought innumerable spinets, good, bad, and indifferent, with reckless confidence. Even Tomlin remonstrated.

"What are you going to do with them?"

"You'll see," said Quinney.

One more blunder—and the use to which he turned it—must be chronicled. By this time he was recognized as an expert on eighteenth-century furniture. But he admitted that there were one or two who knew more than he. Tomlin, for example, who would drop in at least once a week for a chat and a glass of brown sherry. Upon one of these visits he found Quinney in a state of enthusiasm over a Chippendale armchair, unearthed in a small provincial town. Tomlin examined it carefully, and pronounced it a fake.

Quinney refused to believe this; but ultimately conviction that he had been "had" once more was forced upon him.

"Bar none, it's the best copy I ever saw," remarked Tomlin.

Quinney accepted his old friend's chaff with some chucklings. Next day, he returned to the provincial town, and discovered the young cabinet-maker who had made the fake. He returned to Soho in triumph, bringing the cabinet-maker with him. His name was James Miggott, and he entered into a contract to serve Quinney for three years at a salary of two pounds a week.

"Seems a lot," said Susan.

"He was earning twenty-five bob. I shall turn him loose on those spinets."

Most people know something about Quinney's spinets transformed by the hand of the skilful James into writing-desks, sideboards, and dressing-tables. The spinets brought many customers to Soho Square.

"Stock booming?" said Tomlin.

"It is," said Quinney. He added reflectively: "I sold a spinet to-day, for which I gave fifteen shillings, for just the same number o' pounds. James put in just one week on it. That's all, by Gum!"

Some dealers maintain that Quinney made his reputation with spinets, inasmuch as he sold more of them for a couple of years than the trade put together. But he himself believes that his Waterford glass brought the right customers—the famous collectors who buy little, but talk and write much. They liked Quinney because he was so keen; and he never grudged the time spent in showing his wares to non-buyers.

"They tell others," he observed to Susan. "No 'ad.' can beat that."

He had other dodges to capture trade. It became known that he charged nothing for giving his opinion upon specimens submitted to him. And he had an endearing habit of writing to purchasers of the spinets within a few months or weeks of the deal, offering an advance on the price paid, a "nice little profit," invariably refused.

"Bless 'em! It warms their hearts to think they've made a sound investment."

"How surprised and disappointed you'd be, Joe, if they accepted your offer!"

"Right you are, Susie; but there's little fear of that, my girl."

When a new customer entered the shop, Quinney would adopt an air of guileless indifference, which was likely to provoke the remark:

"Where is Mr. Quinney?"

"I'm Quinney. Like to have a look round? You may see something you fancy."

"That's a nice pie-crust table."

"It's a gem. Cheap, too."

Then he would give a low whistle, a clear, flute-like note. James would appear from below.

"Where's the receipted bill for this table?"

The bill was produced and shown to the stranger.

"See? Paid four pounds seventeen for it, just five weeks ago. Look at the date. You shall have it for six pounds, and, by Gum! I'll make you this offer. You can return it to me any day you like within a year, and I'll give you five pound ten for it. How's that, as between man and man?"

These seemingly artless methods captivated the "think-it-overs" and the "rather-nicers," who frequent curiosity shops in ever-increasing numbers. Mothers brought daughters to Soho Square to acquire historical information. Quinney refused to sell a Jacobean armchair because it was so useful an object-lesson to young and inquiring minds.

"Look at that, madam," he would say. Perhaps the lady would murmur softly: "It is rather nice, isn't it?" And the flapper would exclaim enthusiastically: "Mumsie, it's perfectly lovely!"

"Much more than that!" Quinney would add, with mysterious chucklings. "See that rose? It's a Stuart rose. And that crown on the front splat is an emblem of loyalty to the Merry Monarch."

"Dear me! You hear that, Kitty!"

"Pay particular attention to the legs, ladies. Ball and paw, the lion's paw, with hair above them, indicatin' the strength of the Constitootion after the Restoration. Chapter of English history, that chair."

He could embellish such simple themes according to fancy, and with due regard for the patience of his listener. To Susan he spoke of these intellectual exercises as "my little song and dance."

II

Meanwhile, Posy was growing up, becoming a tall, slender, pretty girl. She attended a day-school in Orchard Street—a select seminary for young ladies. Susan accompanied her to and from Orchard Street. By this time she had accepted, with a serenity largely temperamental, the fate allotted to her. Once more Quinney was absorbed in his business. Adversity had brought husband and wife together, prosperity sundered them. Very rarely does it happen that a successful man can spare time to spend on his wife. The charming slackers make the most congenial mates. Compensation has thus ordained it, wherein lie tragedy and comedy. Many women, to the end of their lives, are incapable of realizing this elementary fact. They want their husbands to climb high—the higher the better; they understand, perhaps more clearly than men, what can be seen and enjoyed from the tops; they pluck, often as a matter of course, and gobble up the grapes of Eschol, but they refuse to accept the inevitable penalties of supreme endeavour. Their husbands return to them almost foundered, fit only to eat and sleep. In the strenuous competition of to-day what else is possible?

Susan did not complain, but then she belonged to the generation who accepted with pious resignation life as it is. Indeed, she accounted herself singularly fortunate, and whenever the present seemed dreary she fortified herself by thinking of a rosy past, or projected herself into an enchanted future, when he and she, Darby and Joan, would wander hand in hand to some garden of sleep, some drowsy country churchyard, where they would lie down together to await an ampler and happier intercourse in the life beyond.

Her interest in persons as opposed to things quickened with the growth of her child. Posy became to her what a Chelsea shepherdess modelled by Roubillac was to Quinney—a bit of wonderful porcelain to be enshrined, a museum piece! The maternal instincts budded and bloomed the more bravely because conjugal emotion was denied full expression. She faced unflinchingly the conviction that Posy must marry and leave her. By that time Joe might be more ready to enjoy the fruits of labour. For the moment, then, her husband was pigeon-holed. He remained at the back of her mind, at the bottom of her heart, masked by that sprightly creature, his daughter.

Posy accepted Susan's love as a matter of course.

III

For her years—she was just fifteen—the girl exhibited a precocious intelligence and an essentially masculine shrewdness which distinguished her sire. In the girl's presence Quinney observed no reticences. Invariably he discussed, with boyish zest and volubility, the day's trafficking. Posy was not allowed to potter about the shop, but she ran at will in and out of the sanctuary, and she knew the value of every "gem" in it, and its history. Susan dared not interfere, but she prayed that Joe's child might not be tempted to worship false gods. In an artless fashion she attempted to inculcate a taste for high romance. She read aloud Ivanhoe, and was much distressed by Posy's comments upon certain aspects of the tale.

"The men had a good time, but the women's lives must have been deadly. I'm jolly glad that I'm a twen-center!" She continued fluently: "You have a rotten time, mummie."

"My dear!"

"But you do. I couldn't stick your life!"

She used slang freely, protesting, when rebuked, that she picked it up from the lips of her chum, Ethel Honeybun, who was exalted as the daughter of a Member of Parliament. Susan's silence encouraged her to go on:

"I want all the fun I can get. What fun have you had? You sew a lot, you read aloud to me, you take me to school—although I'm quite able to go alone—you order the meals, you are father's slave."

"I won't have you say that!"

"But it's true."

"I love your father. I married for love. I am happy and contented in my own home. I have no patience with these new-fangled notions about women's rights and women's wrongs."

"Ethel says——"

"I don't wish to hear what Ethel says. Fun, indeed! Why, child, I've had you."

"Was that fun?" She spoke seriously, fixing her mother with a pair of clear, grey eyes. "Some girls love dolls. Dolls rather bored me. Is it fun to mess about with a baby, wash it and dress it, and take it out in a pram? I call hockey fun."

"You'll lose a front tooth some fine day. That will be great fun."

"Let's be perfectly calm. I love talking things out. You don't. I mean to say you try to hide your real self from me. Didn't you think and talk as I do when you were a girl?"

"Most certainly not!"

"You are an old-fashioned darling, and I love you for it! I shouldn't like you to talk as Mrs. Honeybun does. She says you and father spoil me. I wonder if that's true. She gives Ethel beans sometimes, and Ethel answers back as if they were equals. It would give Granny a fit to hear her!"

Twice a year Posy paid a ceremonial visit to Mrs. Biddlecombe. The old lady was very fond of her, although she sniffed at her upbringing. Posy, indeed, had won a moral victory during her first visit, shortly after the Quinneys moved to London. At the end of three days Mrs. Biddlecombe had said majestically to the child:

"I hope you're enjoying yourself, my dear!"

"I'm not," said Posy, with shocking candour.

"Why not?" demanded the astonished grandmother.

"Because you've been so wonnerful peevish."

"Bless my soul, what next! Well, well, you are a pert little maid, but I must try to be more agreeable."

Posy eyed her reflectively.

"I dare say," she murmured, "that I should be wonnerful peevish too, if I was very, very old."

Quinney, against Susan's wishes and protests, insisted that the child should be brought up "as a little princess." She was given many so-called advantages. She was taught to play the piano indifferently well; she danced beautifully; she could chatter French, and was now struggling with German.

"Spare no expense," said Quinney magnificently.

IV

His intimate relations with the growing girl remained constant. He would make the same remarks, pinch her blooming cheeks, pat her head, and kiss her smooth forehead.

"How's my pet this morning?"

"Quite all right, daddy, thank you."

"Gettin' on nicely with your lessons?"

"Oh yes."

Once, when she was five years old, he had soundly smacked her. The sprite had discovered the efficacy of tears as a solvent of difficulties. Whenever her little will was crossed she howled. She howled as if she enjoyed it, and her father was shrewd enough to know this. One morning he caught her up, laid her across his knee, and spanked her till his hand ached. Next day Posy smiled very sweetly at him, and said reproachfully:

"Daddy pank a Posy too hard."

But she stopped howling.

He was well pleased when she began to make friends with people like the Honeybuns. Honeybun was an ubiquitous Socialist who slept at Clapham. Like Quinney, he had soared. The two men had nothing in common except this, but it was a bond between them. Mrs. Honeybun had been a governess in the family of a nobleman. She, too, had soared into an empyrean of advanced thinkers and workers. Familiarity with the titled classes had bred contempt for them. In and out of season she denounced the luxury and indolence of an effete aristocracy. Her own household was managed abominably. She preached and practised the virtues of an Edenic diet. Butcher's meat was spoken of scathingly as the source of most physical and moral infirmities. Apart from this prejudice against flesh-pots and aristocrats, she was a kindly woman, over-zealous as a reformer, displaying a too tempestuous petticoat, but burning with ardour to ameliorate the condition of the poor and oppressed.

She exercised an enormous influence over Posy.

And it is not easy to analyse this influence, which, however well meant, was not entirely for good. Mrs. Honeybun was clever enough to admit that there can be no great gain without an appreciable loss. The only thing that mattered was the satisfaction of being able to affirm that the gain outweighed the loss. Her favourite hobby, which she rode mercilessly, was the necessity of Self-expression, the revealing of the Ego, the essential Spirit loosed from the bondage of the flesh.

Unhappily, to understand the Honeybun philosophy, a mosaic of all creeds, it became necessary to master the "patter." The word is perhaps offensive, but it describes exactly the amazing jargon habitually in the mouths of the exponents of the New Revelation. It is rather dangerous, for example, to tell a young girl adored by her parents that she must begin by loving Herself. Properly assimilated, the injunction is Socratic. Posy accepted it literally. Mrs. Honeybun, of course, explained what she meant, but at such length, with such divagations and irrelevancies, that Posy soon became bored. She told herself that Ethel's mother was a dear, an understanding person, tremendously clever and modern, a twen-center! She could obey this kind and fluent teacher with hearty goodwill. It was so delightfully easy to begin with loving one's Ego.

Susan, it may be imagined, heard too much and too often of the Honeybuns; and she smiled when she discovered that the meals were "skimpy." Posy had a healthy appetite not to be satisfied with nut cutlets or vegetable pie badly cooked and served at odd hours. No servant stayed long with the Honeybuns, because the remains of cold "vegy" pie were expected to be consumed at "elevenses." Susan commented slily on this.

"Your friend, Mrs. Honeybun, seemingly, manages everything and everybody except her own house and her own servants."

To this Posy fervently replied:

"The spiritual food in that house is simply wonderful!"

Before many weeks had passed Susan was given an opportunity of testing the truth of this statement. Mrs. Biddlecombe invited Posy to spend a fortnight in Melchester—a precious fortnight out of the mid-summer holidays. Ethel, some twenty-four hours later, entreated her friend to join the Honeybun family at Ramsgate. Much to Susan's dismay Posy announced her intention of going to Ramsgate.

"It's deadly dull at Melchester, mummie, and just think what a privilege it is, what an opportunity to spend a fortnight with Ethel's mother."

To her astonishment, Ethel's mother placed a different interpretation upon the opportunity.

"Of course, you will go to your grandmother, and I shall expect you to be charming to the old lady. In the nature of things, you can't pay her many more visits. Make this one a fragrant and imperishable memory. Express what is your true self by your devotion to an aged and apparently irritable grandmother."

Posy obeyed, with a result which had special bearing on events duly to be chronicled. Mrs. Biddlecombe, captivated by the sweetness and dutifulness of one whom she had hitherto regarded as a spoiled child, altered her will, leaving everything she possessed to Posy. Susan, she was aware, would be adequately provided for. Perhaps it tickled an elementary sense of humour to make Posy independent of a too autocratic father.

CHAPTER XIII

RUCTIONS

I

If this veracious chronicle were to be considered as a novel written for a purpose, or even what critics term "a serious contribution to contemporary literature," it might be necessary to write at greater length concerning the Honeybun philosophy. Enough, however, has been said to indicate the startling—startling, that is to say, to a young mind—contrast between the Quinney practices and the Honeybun precepts. Substantial meals, admirably cooked, were eaten at regular hours in Soho Square, and the table talk was as material as the roast and boiled. Quinney, before his young daughter, exulted honestly in his hard-won success. The gospel of work was preached in both houses—too insistently, perhaps—but an Atlantic roared between them.

For some months Posy was shrewd enough to digest the Honeybun teaching in silence. She prattled away to her mother, well aware that her girlish confidence would not be repeated to her father. Susan, indeed, served as a lay figure upon which she could drape new ideas and confections. Susan was a born listener. In Lavender Gardens the art of talking was practised by every member of the family simultaneously. Nobody listened, except Posy, who hoped that the day would soon come when she might be considered worthy to join the magnificent chorus. For the moment her mind was expanding. Under her father's tutelage, she was acquiring a knowledge of beautiful things, masterpieces of handicraft; in Lavender Gardens, where no lavender grew, beautiful ideas, Utopian schemes for the regeneration of all woman-kind, were poured unstintingly into her brain-cells.

So far, so good!

Those of us who clamour for results, who yearn to tabulate and classify inevitable consequences, will have prepared themselves for ructions. Quinney was a fighter, a fighter for his own hand. The Honeybuns fought quite as aggressively on behalf of others. It is a nice point for moralists to consider whether or not a woman like Mrs. Honeybun is justified in filling the mind of a young girl with more or less disturbing theories, thinly disguised as cardinal principles, which must sooner or later clash seriously with home teaching. Mrs. Honeybun had no qualms on the subject, being too ardent a propagandist to consider effects when causes were so dear to her. In her small hall, thick with dust from the feet of many pilgrims, hung a brilliantly illuminated text, purple and gold upon vellum:

"LET THERE BE LIGHT!"

She appropriated enthusiastically any text out of the New Testament which could serve her purpose. Texts from the same source, which might be used against that purpose, were triumphantly capped by convincing quotations from the Veda, or the Koran, or the writings of Confucius. The accomplished lady was armed cap-à-pie with the coagulated wisdom of the ages.

Posy's first encounter with her father took place, by the luck of things, at a moment when the little man had just concluded a more than usually successful deal with a millionaire who collected things he did not understand. All big dealers have exceptional days and weeks when Fortune comes to them with both hands full. A clean sweep of many "gems" had been accomplished—what Quinney called a "mop up." His mind naturally was concentrated upon filling the gaps in the sanctuary with other gems of even purer ray serene. Posy confided to Ethel that at such moments her daddy "swanked." The temptation to make a swanker "sit up" under the process described in Lavender Gardens as "seeing things in their true proportion" was irresistible to a young and ardent acolyte. Posy conceived it to be her duty, her mission, to lead her parents to the light. Admittedly, they wallowed in outer darkness.

She tackled her father at breakfast, which, as a rule, he gobbled up in silence, thinking of the day's work ahead. A wiser than she would have selected the postprandial hour, when Nicotina clouds the air of controversy with beneficent and soothing vapours. Quinney had mentioned curtly that he was going to attend a sale at Christopher's. Whereupon Posy threw this bomb:

"Daddy, dear, when are you going to retire from active business?"

Quinney stared at his daughter. Her intelligent eyes were sparkling; in her delicately-cut nostrils titillated the dust of battle.

"Retire from—business?"

"Haven't you made enough?"

Susan looked frightened, but she had anticipated a conflict between two strong wills, and was acutely sensible of her own impotence to prevent it.

"Ho! Now, what do you call enough, my girl?"

Posy was prepared to answer this. She riposted swiftly:

"Haven't we enough to live on decently, and something to spare for others?"

"We?" His voice took a sharper inflection. "How much have you laid by, missie?"

The sharpness and veiled impatience of her tone matched his as she answered:

"You know what I mean."

"I don't. What I've made is mine—my very own. I can do what I like with it."

"Oh, father!"

"Oh, father!" He mimicked her cleverly. "Do you have the sauce to sit there and tell me, your father, that what I've made isn't mine?"

Posy quoted Mrs. Honeybun with overwhelming effect.

"You are a trustee for what you hold, accountable for every penny."

"Accountable—to you?"

He leaned forward, forgetting his bacon, which he liked frizzlingly hot.

"Accountable to Society and God."

"Ho! Then suppose you leave me, my young chick, to account in my own way to Society and God?"

Posy blushed. Let us not label her rashly as a prig. The nymph Echo must have repeated silly remarks in her time. Posy said slowly, speaking with conviction:

"I am part of Society, and I am part of what we call, for want of a better word, God."

Susan murmured warningly:

"That will do, Posy."

"No, it won't!" shouted Quinney. "We'll have this out here and now. What d'ye mean? What the devil d'ye mean? Are you dotty? Why do you spring this on me? What's the game? 'Ave you been a-listening to blasphemous agitators a-spoutin' rubbish in 'Yde Park?"

"No."

"Then where does she get it from?" He appealed to Susan with frantic gestures. "You hear her, mother. Where does she get this from? Answer me!"

"Such talk is in the air, Joe," Susan replied feebly. Explosions lacerated her ears. She had come to place an inordinate value upon peace and quiet.

"In the air! By Gum! she's been breathing the wrong air." Inspiration gripped and shook him. "Gosh! You got this from that dirty Socialist, Honeybun. Don't deny it! These are his notions. But I never thought he'd poison your young mind with 'em."

Posy said with dignity:

"Mr. Honeybun is the best man I know. He practises what he preaches; he lives in and for others. He uses his talents, regardless of his own comfort and worldly prosperity, to ameliorate the lot of the poor and oppressed."

Echo again.

"Poor and oppressed! Ameliorate! What a talker! Now, look ye here, young Posy, I'm going to deal squarely by you. I'm square to the four winds of Heaven, I am! You and I have got to understand each other—see? You're as green as the grass, but you do 'ave some of my brains. I ain't a-goin' to argue with you for one minute. Don't think it! I've forgotten more than you ever knew. Talk is the cheapest thing in London, but knaves like Honeybun buy fools with it. Don't you toss your head! You've made your pore dear mother cry, and you've taken away father's appetite. A nice morning's work. Now, listen! No more Honeybunning! You hear me?"

"Everybody in the house can hear you."

"More sauce! You stand up, miss!"

They rose together, confronting each other. Quinney's scrubby red hair was on end with rage; Posy's small bosom heaved tumultuously. Of late the girl had taken to the wearing of cheap beads and blouses cut low in the neck. Ethel had lamentable taste, but, according to her mother, it was expedient that maidens should work out their own salvation in such matters without parental interference. Quinney scowled at the beads and the white, rounded neck.

"Take off that rubbish!"

"Ethel gave them to me."

"Take 'em off quick! Mother, you see to it that she wears respectable collars!"

Posy removed two strings of large amethystine beads. Quinney took them and hurled them into the fireplace. Tears rolled down Posy's blooming cheeks. She was unaccustomed to violence—a primitive weapon not to be despised by modern man.

"Them beads," said Quinney, who reverted to the diction of his youth when excited, "is beastly—sinfully beastly! They stand for all that I despise; they stand for the cheap, trashy talk which you've been defilin' your mind with. What you need is a good spankin'. Now, mother, I leave Miss Impudence with you. Mark well what I say. No more Honeybunning!"

II

It is significant that Quinney neglected his business that memorable morning in the interests of a child who was beginning to believe that she occupied a back seat in her father's mind. After leaving the dining-room, he clapped on his hat, and betook himself straightway to St. James's Square. There was only one man in all London to whom he could go for honest advice, and fortunately he happened to be in town for the season.

Lord Mel received him graciously.

Quinney stated his case quietly. During the course of the narrative Lord Mel smiled more than once, but his sympathies were entirely with the father, for he had endured, not too patiently, somewhat similar scenes with his own daughters. Moreover, he hated Honeybun, whom he had denounced in the Upper Chamber as a mischievous and unscrupulous demagogue.

Quinney ended upon a high note of interrogation:

"What shall I do with her, my lord?"

Lord Mel considered the question, trying to stand upright in the shoes of his former tenant. It is a hopeful sign of the times that such magnates do descend from their pedestals, and attempt, with a certain measure of success, to see eye to eye with the groundlings.

"I prescribe a change of diet, my dear fellow. We must both face the disconcerting fact that girls to-day need special treatment. Mrs. Honeybun is one of the Shrieking Sisterhood. I have heard her shriek—she does it effectively. Noise appeals to the very young. I suggest removing Posy from Orchard Street, and sending her to a carefully conducted boarding school, where plenty of fresh air and exercise will soon blow these ideas out of her pretty head. There are dozens of such schools scattered along our south coast."

"Send her away from me and her mother?"

"Drastic, I admit, but you have put it admirably. 'No more Honeybunning!' Keep her in London, and she may Honeybun on the sly. Will you entrust this little matter of finding a suitable school to me?"

"Your lordship is a real friend."

"I will speak to my lady."

"Expense don't matter," said Quinney earnestly. "I want my daughter to have the best, because, my lord, as a young feller, I had the worst. No education at all! Posy's a wonderful talker! She'd have downed me this morning if I'd let her. She talks like—like——"

"Like Honeybun, eh?"

"If I wasn't sittin' in your lordship's library, I should damn that dirty dog!"

"Such fellows thrive on abuse. That is their weapon. We must use others—ridicule, for example. How old is your girl?"

"Nearly sixteen."

"Good! You have nipped a cankered bud in time. You shall hear from me within twenty-four hours, Let me show you an interesting bit of Crown Derby bisque." He paused, and added derisively: "You know, Quinney, there are moments when my things appeal to me tremendously. Persons are disappointing, but every day I discover fresh beauties in my china cabinets."

"Same here," said Quinney, with enthusiasm.

III

Accordingly, Posy was dispatched to a boarding school at Bexhill-on-Sea, kept by two gentlewomen of the right sort, sensible, up-to-date, highly-trained teachers, who ruled well and wisely over some twenty girls, the daughters, for the most part, of hard-working, professional men. Here we will leave Posy in good company. She was feeling sore and humiliated after an unconditional surrender; but her sense of impotence soon passed away. She loved her whimsical father and desired to please him, although she writhed—as he had writhed—under the heel of parental discipline. She began to study with assiduity, and was highly commended.

IV

Meanwhile, Susan and Quinney were left alone for the first time since Posy's birth. Susan rejoiced in secret. She had her Joe to herself. Posy was in the habit of dusting the more valuable bits of china in the sanctuary, and cleaning the old glass. Susan undertook these small duties, and pottered in and out of the sanctuary at all hours. Quinney threw crumbs of talk to her, but he refused emphatically her timid request to serve him once more as a saleswoman. At his wish, she rarely entered the shop below. James Miggott was in charge of that. Quinney was engrossed with the buying and selling of "stuff"; he attended to an immense correspondence, writing all his letters in the sanctuary, where he could pause from his labours to suck fresh energy from the contemplation of his treasures. The prices he paid for some of them terrified Susan, although she knew that he made few mistakes and immense profits. She remarked that his reluctance to part with the finest specimens had become almost a monomania. There was a lacquer cabinet; in particular, standing upon a richly gilded Charles the Second stand. Quinney had paid eight hundred pounds for it, and he had been offered a thousand guineas within six months. He confessed to Susan that he couldn't live without it. The cabinet was flanked by an incised lacquer screen, a miracle of Chinese workmanship. He refused a handsome profit on that. Susan asked herself:

"Does he worship these false gods? Would he miss that cabinet more than he would miss me?"

She noticed, too, that he was overworked. During his many absences from home letters would accumulate. To answer them he rose earlier and went to bed later, deaf to her remonstrance. He promised to engage a typist and stenographer—some day.

Nevertheless, this was a pleasant time, but it lasted only a few months. Mrs. Biddlecombe took to her bed again. Susan was summoned to Melchester. The old lady was really dying, but she took her time about it. Susan ministered to her till the end.

After the funeral, when she returned to Soho Square, a surprise awaited her. Quinney had fulfilled his promise. In the sanctuary, at a beautiful Carlton desk, sat Miss Mabel Dredge, a young and attractive woman, the typist and stenographer. Poor Susan experienced tearing pangs of jealousy when she beheld her, but Quinney's treatment of the stranger was reassuring. Obviously, he regarded Miss Dredge as a machine.

And his unaffected delight over Susan's return home was positively rejuvenating.

CHAPTER XIV

JAMES MIGGOTT

I

In common with other great men who have achieved success, Quinney was endowed with a Napoleonic faculty of picking the right men to serve him. Having done so, he treated them generously, so that they remained in his service, loath to risk a change for the worse. He paid good wages, and was complaisant in the matter of holidays.

James Miggott had been his most fortunate discovery. James was "brainy" (we quote Quinney), ambitious, healthy, and an artist in his line: the repairing of valuable old furniture. Also he was good-looking, which counted with his employer. A few weeks after joining the establishment it had been arranged that he should sleep in a comfortable room in the basement, and take his meals at a restaurant in Old Compton Street. During his provincial circuits Quinney liked to know that a man was in charge of the house at night. James's habits, apparently, were as regular as his features.

By this time he had come to be regarded as foreman. Bit by bit he had won Quinney's entire confidence. The master talked to the man more freely than he talked to Susan about everything connected with his business. James listened attentively, made occasionally some happy suggestion, and betrayed no signs of a swollen head. A natural inflation might have been expected. Quinney's eyes failed to detect it. Moreover, Susan liked him, and respected him. He attended Divine service on Sundays; he ate and drank in moderation; he was scrupulously neat in appearance; he had received a sound education, and expressed himself well in good English. Truly a paragon!

Quinney had secured Miss Mabel Dredge after his own fashion. Hitherto his typewriting had been done by a firm which employed a score of typists. The head of that firm happened to be a lady of great intelligence and energy, the widow of a stockbroker who had died bankrupt. Quinney knew about her, liked and admired her, and told her so in his whimsical way. She liked and respected Quinney. Also, by an odd coincidence, Mrs. Frankland had begun her struggle for existence in London at the time when Quinney left Melchester. They had compared notes; each had undergone thwackings. When Mrs. Frankland began to make money she spent most of it at Quinneys'. Amongst other bits, she had bought a spinet—cheap. Accordingly, when Quinney entreated her to find a competent young woman, she generously offered him the pick of her establishment.

Mabel Dredge went with alacrity, glad to escape from a small table in a large room, not too well ventilated. She intended, from the first, to give satisfaction, to "hold down" the new job. She was tall and dark, with a clear, colourless skin, and a rather full-lipped mouth, which indicated appreciation of the good things in life. Mrs. Frankland had said to her:

"You will earn a bigger salary, Mabel, and Mr. Quinney won't make love to you."

Mabel Dredge smiled pensively. She could take care of herself, and she had no reason to suppose that she was susceptible. Men had made love to her, but they were the wrong men. She had refused kind invitations to lunch or dine at smart restaurants. When she walked home after the day's work she encountered smiles upon the faces of well-dressed loafers. No answering smile on her lips encouraged these dear-stalkers to address her. But, deep down in her heart, was a joyous and thrilling conviction that she was desirable. The male passers-by who did not smile aroused unhappy qualms. Was she losing her looks? Was she growing old? Could it be possible that she might die an old maid?

Upon the morning when she appeared in Soho Square Quinney sent for James. He said abruptly:

"James Miggott will show you round. If you want to know anything, go to him. Don't ask me foolish questions, because that makes me lose my hair; and I ain't got any to lose that way. See?"

"Certainly, sir."

"Dessay he'll tell you where you can get a plate of roast beef in the middle of the day, between one and two. You have an hour off then. What did Mrs. Frankland allow you?"

"Forty minutes."

"Just so. You'll find me easy to get along with, if you do your duty. James will tell you that I'm a remarkable man. I call him James, and I shall call you Mabel. It saves time, and time's money. You can scoot off with James."

The pair disappeared. Quinney's eyes twinkled. He was thinking of Susan, and recalling that memorable afternoon when he kissed her for the first time behind the parlour-door in Laburnum Row.

II

We have mentioned James Miggott's almost magical powers of transforming eighteenth-century spinets into desks and dressing-tables. These useful and ornamental pieces of furniture were sold as converted spinets, and they commanded a handsome price because the transformation was achieved with such consummate art. Even experts were at a loss to point out the difference between what was originally old and what had been added. James had access to Quinney's collection of mahogany—the broken chairs, tables, beds, doors, and bureaux which the little man had bought for a song of sixpence before mahogany leapt again into fashion. The collection had begun in Melchester, and Quinney was always adding to it. In it might be found exquisitely carved splats and rails and ball-and-claw legs, many of them by the hand of the great craftsmen—Chippendale, Sheraton, Hepplewhite, and Adam. One cellar and two attics were full of these interesting relics.

Shortly after James's appearance in Soho Square Quinney succumbed to the temptation of doctoring "cripples," which besets most honest dealers in antique furniture. He had, as we know, pledged himself not to sell faked specimens of china or faked old oak, except as such. And he had stuck to the strict letter of this promise, thereby securing many customers, and winning their confidence. It had paid him to be honest. With sorrowful reluctance we must give some account of his divagations from the straight and narrow way.

The temptation assailed Quinney with especial virulence, because "cripples" of high degree appealed to him quite as strongly as, let us say, a desperately injured sprig of nobility, battered to bits in a motor accident, may appeal to the skill and patience of a famous surgeon. When Quinney found a genuine Chippendale chair in articulo mortis, he could sit down and weep beside it. To restore it to health and beauty became a labour of love, almost a duty. He had not, of course, the technical skill for such work; and he had not found any cabinet-maker who was absolutely the equal of the Minihy man till he discovered James Miggott. The first important task assigned to James was the mending of an elaborately carved Chippendale settee, a museum piece. James threw his heart and his head into the job; and, within the year, that settee was sold at Christopher's, after examination by experts, as an untouched and perfect specimen. Quinney was no party to this fraud, for the settee had never belonged to him, but it opened his eyes to the possibilities of patching "cripples." And every week he was being offered these "cripples." The finest specimens, by the best craftsmen, are rare; the full sets of eight incomparable chairs, for instance, come but seldom into the open market. But the "cripples" may be found in any cottage in the kingdom, fallen from the high estate of some stately saloon to the attic of a servant.

Tom Tomlin was one of the very few who saw the Chippendale settee after James had restored it. Within a few days he attempted to lure the young man from Soho Square, but James refused an offer of a larger salary, and elected to stay with Quinney. Possibly he mistrusted Tomlin, whose general appearance was far from prepossessing. Tomlin, however, was not easily baffled. He seized an early opportunity of speaking privately to Quinney.

"Joe," he said, "this young feller is the goods. He can do the trick."

"Do what trick?"

Tomlin winked.

"Any trick, I take it, known to our trade. The very finest faker of old furniture I ever came across. Now, as between man and man, are you going to make a right and proper use of him?"

"What d'ye mean, Tom?"

"Tchah! You know well enough what I mean. Why beat about the bush with an old friend? Are you going to turn this young man loose amongst that old stuff you've collected?"

Quinney laughed, shaking his head.

"Am I going to let James Miggott fake up all that old stuff? No, by Gum! No!"

"But, damn it! Why not?"

"Several reasons. One'll do. I've sworn solemn not to sell fakes unless they're labelled as such."

"Of all the silly rot——"

"There it is."

Tomlin went away, but he returned next day, and asked for a glass of brown sherry. Quinney had one, too.

"I've a proposition to make," said Tomlin. "You've got a small gold mine in this Miggott, but you don't mean to work him properly. Well, let me do it."

"How?"

"Suppose I send you 'cripples' to be mended. Any objections to that?"

"None."

"This young Miggott mends 'em, and puts in his best licks on 'em too. Then you send 'em back to me."

"That all?"

Tomlin winked.

"Do you want to know any more? Is it your business to inquire what becomes of the stuff after you've doctored it? And, mind you, I shall pay high for the doctorin'. You leave that to me. You won't be disappointed with my cheques."

Let it be remembered, although we hold no brief for Quinney, that this subtle temptation assailed him shortly after his bludgeonings, when he was tingling with impatience to "get even" with the Londoners who had "downed" him.

In fine, he accepted Tomlin's offer.

Quinney has since confessed that at first he was very uneasy, honesty having become a pleasant and profitable habit. There were moments when he envied moral idiots like Tomlin, stout, smiling, red-faced sinners, who positively wallowed and gloried in sinfulness. Tomlin pursued pleasure upon any and every path. He went racing, attended football matches, was a patron of the Drama and the Ring, ate and drank immoderately, made no pretence of being faithful to Mrs. Tomlin, or honest with the majority of his customers. His amazing knowledge of Oriental porcelain had given him an international reputation. He never attempted to deceive the experts, and, in consequence, was quoted as a high authority in such papers as The Collector and Curios. He knew exactly what his customers needed, and was the cleverest salesman in the kingdom. Less successful dealers affirmed that the devil took especial care of Tom Tomlin.

III

Quinney had no reason to complain of Tomlin's cheques. He knew that his old friend was being scrupulously square, and sharing big profits with him. Tomlin had customers from the Argentine, from the Brazils, from all parts of the earth where fortunes are made and spent swiftly. The "cripples" disappeared mysteriously, and were never heard of again. By this time Tomlin had moved to his famous premises in Bond Street. He had not achieved the position of Mr. Lark, because he lacked that great man's education and polish, but he was quite the equal of Mr. Bundy.

It is important to mention that Tomlin sent very few cripples to Soho Square. Nor were they delivered by his vans. They arrived unexpectedly from provincial towns; they were invariably authentic specimens, the finest "stuff." No understrapper beheld them. James carried them tenderly to his operating theatre, whence they emerged pale of complexion, but sound in limb. Daily massage followed, innumerable rubbings. Then Tomlin would drop in, and nudge Quinney, and chuckle. The two dealers would pull out their glasses and examine the patient with meticulous zeal. James would watch them with a slightly derisive smile upon his handsome face. At the end of his three years' engagement Quinney raised his salary to three pounds a week. The little man expected an extravagant expression of gratitude, but he didn't get it. At times James's smile puzzled him.

IV

Posy remained at Bexhill-on-Sea till she was eighteen. Her friendship for the Honeybuns had been slowly extinguished. Mrs. Honeybun, who mortified everything in her thin body except pride, refused peremptorily to see Posy against the expressed wish of her father. Posy wrote to Ethel long screeds answered with enthusiasm at first and then perfunctorily. At the end of the year the girls drifted apart.

Posy, however, made other friends. When she came home for her first holidays, Quinney and Susan conspired together to make things pleasant for her. She had plenty of pocket money. Susan and she went to many plays, many concerts, all the good shows. Quinney rubbed his hands and chuckled, but he declined to accompany them.

The two years of school passed with astonishing swiftness; and the improvement to Posy quickened a lively gratitude in Quinney to Lord Mel. She developed into a charming young woman, irresponsible as yet, but a joyous creature, easy to please and be pleased. Quinney was delighted with her. He told her solemnly:

"My poppet, you're a perfect lady; yes, you are."

Posy went into peals of laughter.

"Daddy, how funny you are!"

This talk took place upon the day that Posy said good-bye to her school-fellows, and returned home as a more or less finished product of the boarding-school system.

"Funny? Me? I don't feel funny, my pretty, when I look at you. I feel proud. One way and t'other I suppose you've cost me nigh upon four thousand pounds!"

"Daddy, dear! Not as much as that, surely?"

Quinney cocked his head at a sharp angle, while he computed certain sums.

"I figure it out in this way," he said slowly. "In hard cash you stand me in about fifteen hundred spread over the last ten years. Now, if I'd stuffed that amount into Waterford glass, I could have cleaned up five thousand at least. See?"

"I see," said Posy, and laughed again.

"The question now is," continued Quinney, absorbed in admiration of her delicate colouring, "what the 'ell am I going to do with such a fancy piece?"

"Father!" exclaimed Susan. "Do please try to remember that you're not talking to Mr. Tomlin."

"When I feel strongly," replied Quinney simply, "I just have to use strong language. Posy has come home to what?"

"She's come home, Joe. That's enough. Why bother about anything else?"

"Because I'm the bothering sort, old dear—that's why. I look ahead. I count my chickens before they're hatched."

Susan said slily:

"Yes, you made sure that this chicken was going to be hatched a boy."

The three laughed. It was a pleasant moment of compensation for long years of anxiety and toil. Each had worked for it. Posy had submitted, not without kickings and prickings, to strict discipline; Quinney, from the child's birth, had determined that the stream must rise higher than its source; Susan, serenely hopeful about the future, had worried unceasingly over the present, concerned about petty ailments, the putting on and off of suitable under-linen, and so forth.

"Don't bother about me, daddy; I'm all right."

"By Gum, you are! That's why I bother. In my experience it's the right bits that get smashed!"

V

Perhaps nobody was more surprised at the change in Posy than James Miggott. Hitherto the young lady, home for the holidays, had ignored him, not purposely—she was too kindhearted for that—but with a genuine unconsciousness of giving offence. He was part and parcel of what she least liked in her father's house, the shop. Not for an instant was she ashamed of being the daughter of a dealer in antiques, who owned a shop; what exasperated her was the conviction that the shop owned him, that he had become the slave of his business. The Honeybuns had rubbed into her plastic mind that the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost, the root-cause of ruin to nations and individuals, began and ended with the lust of accumulating material things. Nothing moved Mrs. Honeybun to more fervent and eloquent speech than the text: "Lay not up treasures upon earth!" At Bexhill-on-Sea Posy had heard this same injunction upon the lips of a local Chrysostom, to whom she listened enthusiastically every Sunday morning. The text had a personal application, because she never heard it, or a variant on it, without thinking of the sanctuary and her father's "gems," apostrophized by Susan as "sticks and stones." Posy admired beautiful things, but if they were very costly she seemed to have a curious fear of them. Before she was born, Susan had experienced strongly the same fear of her Joe's idols.

She was, however, discreet enough to conceal this from her father. He took her to Christopher's, where a miraculous piece of reticulated K'ang He was on exhibition, prior to sale. It was an incense-box decorated with figures of the eight Immortals in brilliant enamels. Metaphorically, Quinney went down on his knees before it. Next day he told Posy that it had fetched seven thousand guineas! He stared at her sharply, because she showed no enthusiasm.

James Miggott beheld her as Aphrodite fresh from the sea. Poor Mabel Dredge appeared sallow beside her, tired and spent after a hot July. Posy glowed. She was not insensible to the homage of admiring glances, and James, by the luck of things, happened to be the first good-looking man with whom she was thrown into intimate contact. Propinquity! What follies are committed in thy company!

She wondered why James's handsome face and manly figure had never impressed her before. She spoke to Susan about him with nonchalant vivacity:

"James is a power in this house."

"Yes, dear; your father thinks the world of him. He is a very good young man."

"Good? Now what do you mean by that?"

"Gracious! I hope you haven't inherited father's trick of asking questions."

"Is James pious?"

"Pious? He goes to church; he does his duty; he is to be trusted; he's a hard worker, and from what your father tells me, a real artist."

"An artist? Does he work for the love of his work?"

"I think he does."

Then and there Posy decided to cultivate James Miggott. He had excited the curiosity of an intelligent maiden. She found herself wondering what he did with himself when his work was done. Did he read? Had he any real friends? Was Miss Dredge a friend of his? What were his ambitions? The more she thought of him, the sorrier she became for him. Possibly he perceived this. Upon the rare occasions when they met, he was careful to assume a captivating air of melancholy, preserving conscientiously the right distance between them, scrupulously polite but somewhat indifferent to her advances, thereby piquing her to bolder efforts to bridge the distance. A woman of experience might have been justified in assuming that a man who could play so careful a game was no tyro at it.

This preliminary sparring lasted nearly two months.

CHAPTER XV

AT WEYMOUTH

I

Only lookers-on at the human comedy can be consistently philosophical. The drama is too exciting, too distracting to the players. When a man is chasing his hat along a gusty thoroughfare, he takes little heed of the headgear of others. Till now Posy's outlook had been girlishly critical. Her ideas and ideals were coloured or discoloured by the persons with whom she came in contact, but she was modest and sensible enough to realize that her experience of the big things of life was negligible. She had never suffered sharp pain either of mind or body. The death of her grandmother affected her subjectively. A familiar figure had been removed from her small circle. A landmark had vanished for ever. It was awful to reflect that her own mother might have been taken. She remembered an incident at school, the summoning of a girl about her own age, a chum, to the presence of the headmistress. The girl, to the wonder of all, had not returned to the class-room, but Posy saw her an hour later putting her things together for a long journey. The girl's face had changed terribly. In answer to the first eager question, she had said, drearily: "My mother is dead."

Posy burst into tears; the girl's eyes were dry. Then Posy stammered out: "Did you love her very much?" and the other laughed, actually laughed, as she replied: "Love her? She was all I had in the world!" This glimpse of a grief beyond tears was a unique experience, something which transcended imagination, and something, therefore, not fully absorbed. For many nights Posy was haunted by the vision of that white, drawn face, with its hungry, despairing expression; then it slowly faded away. By this time, also, she had almost forgotten the Honeybun stories of the submerged tenth. Bexhill breezes had blown them out of her mind. Somewhere in festering slums and alleys, men and women and children were fighting desperately against disease, poverty, and vice. Teachers had pointed out, with kindly common sense, that it would be morbid and futile to allow the mind to dwell upon conditions which, for the moment, a schoolgirl was powerless to ameliorate. With relief, Posy had purged her thoughts of such horrors.

And now her father raised the question—What was to be done with this fancy piece?

Posy answered that question after her own fashion. The Chrysostom aforesaid—excellent, practical parson!—had indicated a task. Under his teaching and preaching Posy had returned gladly enough to the fold of the Church of England. She no longer thought of Omnipotence as a vague essence permeating the universe. The Deity had become personal. Chrysostom, however, was too sensible a man to fill the minds of schoolgirls with doctrinal problems. He preached practical Christianity with sincerity and eloquence. The nail he hammered home into youthful pates was this: "Make the world a pleasanter place for others, and you will find it more pleasant for yourselves." The girls at Posy's school indulged in mild chaff over this dictum. Sweet seventeen admonished blushing sixteen to "Be a sunbeam!" Another catchword in frequent use was: "Save a smile for mother!"

Fired by the conviction that the sunbeam business paid handsome dividends, Posy returned to Soho Square. She intended to brighten the lives of everybody in the house, including the tweenie. That, for the moment, was to be her "job." She described the process as "binging 'em up."

And the member of her father's household who seemed to be most in need of "binging" happened to be James Miggott.

II

In August—she had left school for good at the end of the summer term—Posy and her mother went to Weymouth. Quinney did not accompany them. He said, jocularly, that he got all the change he needed travelling about the kingdom in search of "stuff." Business being at a low ebb in August, he selected that month for a general stocktaking, balancing of accounts, and the planning of an active autumn campaign. Mabel Dredge remained with him, a most capable assistant; James Miggott was told that he might spend three weeks wherever he pleased.

It will never be known whether or not James knew that Susan and Posy were going to Weymouth. We do know that Posy met James on the pier, and was much struck by his gentlemanly appearance. It is possible that the young man planned this meeting; it is quite impossible to infer as much from what passed between them. James raised a neat straw hat, and was strolling on, when Posy waved her parasol.

"Are you thinking of cutting me?" she asked, holding out her hand. "What an extraordinary coincidence your being here?"

"Is it?" asked James quietly. "I have been to Weymouth before, have you?"

"No; this is our first visit. Did father tell you we were coming?"

"No." He laughed derisively, as he continued, "Mr. Quinney does not talk to me about you. I can imagine that he might—er—object——"

He paused significantly.

"Object to what?"

"To this. I know my place, Miss Quinney."

He was as humble as Uriah Heep, but more prepossessing in appearance. The sun and wind had tanned his cheeks, his brown hair curled crisply beneath the brim of his smart hat. He wore white shoes and quiet grey "flannels.

"Now that you are here," said Posy, "let us sit down and listen to the band. Mother is writing to father. She writes every day, dear thing! She will turn up presently."

Once more James hesitated, but he obeyed. The band played a popular waltz; upon the beach below people were bathing; the sea displayed the many twinkling smile as the breeze kissed the lips of the wavelets.

"Jolly, isn't it?" said Posy.

"Very."

"But you don't look jolly, Mr. Miggott. You never do look very jolly. And I have wondered—why."

She looked straight into his eyes, smiling pleasantly, anxious to put him at ease, anxious also to peer beneath an impassive surface, to find out "things" concerning a good young man, whose goodness, apparently, had not brought with it a very delirious happiness.

"Shall I tell you?" he asked, in a voice that trembled oddly. "Shall I let myself go for once? Ought I?"

Posy glanced the length of the pier. Her mother was not in sight. She might not appear for half an hour.

"Yes; please tell me."

He told his tale so fluently that the uncharitable might hazard the conjecture that he had told it before, perhaps to Mabel Dredge. By hinting at this we have somewhat prejudiced the effect on the reader, who must bear in mind that Posy was too innocent and young to entertain such suspicions.

"I don't look jolly, Miss Quinney, because I don't feel jolly. Perhaps you think that a man ought to disguise his feelings when he's with a charming young lady. Well, I can't. I'm too honest. It was a shock just now meeting you, because you stand for everything I want and can't get."

The inflections of his voice far more than the actual words challenged her interest. Obviously, he was capable of feeling, and she had deemed him cold. He continued more calmly, subtly conveying to her the impression that he was suppressing his emotions on her account.

"I am your father's foreman, and I earn three pounds a week. Lark and Bundy, Tomlin, any of the big dealers would pay me five pounds a week, but I can't leave Soho Square."

Posy said hastily:

"I'm sure father couldn't spare you."

"I am useful to him. I'm not such a fool as to underrate my services. He is generous. He will raise my salary, but I shall remain downstairs. I repeat, I know my place. I am fully aware that I ought not to be talking to you like this. Mr. Quinney would be angry."

"Really, that is absurd."

"Do you know your father as well as I know him?"

She evaded his eyes.

"Perhaps not, but there's nothing of the snob about daddy; he never pretends to be better than he is. He rose from the ranks, and he's proud of it. I'm proud of it. I admire men who rise. I have no use for slackers who owe everything to others. Why shouldn't you rise higher than father? You are better educated and a greater artist."

"What! You have thought of me as an artist?"

"I have been told that you are an artist. Father says so, and Mr. Tomlin. It interested me enormously. You love your work for your work's sake. That is fine. And yet you tell me that you are unhappy, that it gives you a shock to meet me, because I stand for everything you want and can't get. What do you want?"

"Freedom for one thing."

"Mustn't freedom be earned? I have been taught so. You are serving, I suppose, your apprenticeship. The work you love may be a small part of that, and the rest drudgery. I used to loathe playing scales, but I tried to be jolly."

"Your position is assured."

"If you're the right sort, yours will be."

"I shall be jolly when it is. You ought to know all the truth, Miss Quinney, if my stupid affairs don't bore you too utterly?

"Can't you see how interested I am?"

"You are divinely kind. I can't express what your sympathy means to me. Well, you spoke of my rising. That's just where the shoe pinches. I have not risen; I have fallen."

"Fallen from—what?"

"My people were gentlepeople."

"Oh!"

She drew in her breath sharply. James could see that his last shaft had transfixed her. He was very clever, and he guessed exactly how she felt about gentlepeople, using the word in its widest sense. Quinney's money had made her a gentlewoman.

"My father was an officer in the Army." (It was true that James's father had once held a second lieutenant's commission in the Militia.) "My mother was the daughter of a West Country parson. They died when I was a boy. There was practically nothing for me. I was educated at a charitable institution. Charity apprenticed me to a cabinet-maker at Exeter. Charity nearly buried me—twice. I have known what it is, Miss Quinney, to be without food, and without money, and to wake morning after morning wishing that I had died in the night!"

III

This was the part of the tale which James told so fluently. Admittedly, that last long sentence smacked of rhetorical effect. It could hardly have been entirely impromptu. Nevertheless, it rolled Posy in the dust. She became horribly conscious of rushing in where angels might fear to tread. Indeed, that hackneyed quotation occurred to her. She ejaculated, "Oh!" for the second time, and blushed piteously. James rose to his feet. He spoke politely:

"I see that I have distressed you, and I am very sorry; but you asked me."

"I, too, am sorry," said Posy earnestly. "I am most awfully sorry. I wish I could say the right thing, but I feel rather a fool."

"The right thing for me to say, Miss Quinney, is good-bye. I shall go to Lulworth this afternoon."

"But why should you go? I don't understand. Are you going on our account?"

"On my own."

Another transfixing shaft. Posy was too honest to misinterpret this calm statement. Secretly she was thrilled by it; delicious shivers crept up and down her spine. For the first time she became supremely conscious of her power over a man. At that moment she turned from a jolly girl into a woman. It touched her to fine issues. In a low, tremulous voice she faltered:

"You know best."

James raised his hat and went.

IV

Half an hour later Susan had the story, with reserves, from Posy's lips. Are we to blame the girl because she left out the climax? At any rate, her conscience remained clear. She could not betray a sacred confidence.

Susan was not vastly interested, as a wiser mother might have been. She accepted James's departure with a certain smug satisfaction which exasperated her daughter. She was sure that father would approve. Posy said sharply:

"But, mummie, daddy couldn't object to our being decently civil to Mr. Miggott?"

"He might."

"But why—why?"

"Father is so ambitious for you, child. Any gallivanting about with his foreman——"

"Gallivanting! Who spoke of gallivanting? Mr. Miggott is a gentleman. You like him and respect him. So do I. The word 'gallivanting' sounds so housemaidy, so merry-go-roundy."

"Oh, well, my dear, I'm glad the young man has gone, that's all."

The subject remained closed for the rest of the Weymouth visit. Mother and daughter returned to London a month later. James was at work downstairs. When Posy and he met, she could hardly believe that he was the same James who had sat beside her on the pier. His dignified salutation, "Good-afternoon, Miss Quinney!" seemed ludicrously inadequate, but what else could the poor fellow have said? Posy could find no answer to this insistent question, and yet she had expected a different greeting. He had not offered to shake hands, nor had she. Ought she to have held out her hand first? Was he offended because she hadn't? When she woke next morning she wondered whether James was wishing that he had died in the night. The determination to brighten his life, within reasonable limits, imposed itself upon her while she was dressing. More, it inspired her to choose a clean, lilac-coloured frock, which became her admirably. Putting up her hair she was careful to arrange it artistically, because an artist might look at it with deep-set, melancholy eyes. If you had told her that she was romantic she would have been furious.

At breakfast Quinney said briskly:

"I've a job for you, my girl."

"Certainly, daddy."

"I'm going to turn over to you the dusting of my china, and the cleaning of the Waterford glass. You used to do it nicely before you went to boarding-school."

"I shall just love it."

Quinney was much gratified. Posy, he reflected, was his own dear daughter; no nonsense about her, no highfalutin airs and graces, first and last a perfect lady. He smacked his lips with satisfaction.

"You must teach me values, daddy."

"By Gum, I will. You'll learn, too, mighty quick. Did the girls at your school ever throw it up to you that you was a tradesman's daughter?"

"No, I told them that you were the honestest dealer in England."

"So I am, my pretty, the honestest in the world. It pays to be honest."

"That's not why you're honest?"

"No, missie, it ain't. I swore solemn never to sell fakes except as such the night you was born."

"What a funny time to choose!"

Susan made a sign to him, but he went on:

"Funny? Never could make out why people use that word in such a silly way. Funny? Your dear mother nearly died the night you came to us."

Susan interfered nervously.

"Now, Joe, you ain't going into that, are you?"

"Yes, I am. Why not? It's high time, speakin' of values, that young Posy should know just what she cost us. I say it's part of her education, the part she couldn't learn at school. She's eighteen. She knows, I take it, that she didn't drop from heaven into the middle of a gooseberry bush?"

At this Susan, not Posy, blushed. It was the girl who said, calmly:

"You are quite right, father. I ought to know what I've cost both of you." She looked at her mother tenderly, and spoke in a softer voice: "Is it true that you nearly died?"

"Yes."

"And so did I," said Quinney.

Posy's eyes filled with tears.

"I shall always remember that," she murmured.

CHAPTER XVI

A BUSINESS PROPOSITION

I

"The covers are perfectly beautiful," said Quinney, "the very finest needlework, all of 'em worked by the same hand, and all of 'em different in pattern."

He was staring at a set of eight chairs which had arrived that morning from a town in Essex. James had just unpacked them, and was regarding them gloomily, for he cared nothing about needlework covers, and the chairs themselves were of walnut, very old, very worm-eaten, and carved by a prentice hand. He said so presently. Quinney snorted.

"Do you think, my lad, I'd ask you to waste your time and talents tinkering with those? Rip off the covers carefully, and put them aside. Save the nails and the backing. Don't show 'em to anybody. They need cleaning, but I shan't send 'em to a reg'lar cleaner's. You can try your hand on 'em."

"Not much in my line," said James.

"Liver out o' whack this morning?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Well, try to look more cheerful. It pays."

He scuttled off, chuckling to himself, and thinking what fools other dealers were, for these chairs had been bought cheap from a dealer who, like James Miggott, knew nothing of the value of eighteenth-century needlework.

By the luck of things, that same morning Tom Tomlin telephoned from Bond Street, asking him to drop in at his earliest convenience. Quinney went at once, well aware that procrastination loses many a bit of business. He found his friend in much excitement.

"Got something to show you," said Tomlin.

"Got something to show you," retorted Quinney.

"What?"

"The finest set of old needlework chair-covers I've seen for many a long day."

Tomlin exhibited enthusiasm.

"That beats the band!" he exclaimed. "Looks as if it was fairly meant."

"What d'ye mean, Tom?"

"You come along with me, and see."

Quinney followed him, conscious of a rising excitement, for Tomlin reserved enthusiasm for memorable occasions. The pair walked together down Bond Street and into Oxford Street. In a few minutes they were passing Lark and Bundy's establishment. Tomlin paused at the great plate-glass window.

"Look at them chairs, Joe."

Quinney flattened his nose against the glass, being slightly short-sighted. The chairs were magnificent.

"Nice lot—hey?"

"And a nice price Bundy paid for 'em. You wasn't at Christopher's the day before yesterday?"

"By Gum! Tom, you don't mean to say that those are the Pevensey chairs?"

"Yes, bang out of Pevensey Court, sold with Chippendale's receipt for 'em. Sixteen hundred guineas, my tulip!"

They went on in silence. Presently Quinney growled out: "It's a cruel price."

"They're the goods, Joe. Hall-marked! Bundy can place 'em at a big profit with Dupont Jordan. Did you notice the carving?"

"Did I? Never saw a finer set, never!"

They walked on towards the Circus, and presently turned sharp to the right. By this time they were approaching Soho Square.

"Come out of our way a bit, haven't we?"

Tomlin replied solemnly. "I wanted you to have a squint at those chairs first. Here we are."

They paused opposite a mean house, entered an open door, and ascended a rickety, evil-smelling staircase. Tomlin pulled a key from his pocket, unlocked a door upon the second floor, and ushered Quinney into a biggish room filled with odds and ends of furniture. Quinney had been here before. It was one of Tomlin's many small warehouses. The centre of the floor had been cleared, and in this cleared space stood four chairs.

"Thunder and Mars!"

"Thought you'd be surprised," muttered Tomlin, pulling up a dirty blind.

The four chairs were carved like the chairs from Pevensey Court. They had horsehair seats much dilapidated, and the mahogany had been mercilessly treated, but to a connoisseur such as Quinney there was not a scintilla of doubt that they were carved by the same master hand which had designed and executed the set in Lark and Bundy's window.

"Where are the other four?" asked Quinney, on his knees before the chairs, running his hands over them, caressing them with tender touches.

"Where? Oh, where?" said Tomlin. Then he spoke curtly and to the point:

"Them four came out of Ireland. I paid fifty pound for 'em."

"You do have the devil's own luck, Tom."

"Not so fast. I can't find out anything about them. If I tried to sell 'em, as they are, Lark would see to it that fellows like Pressland crabbed 'em, as he did that commode o' yours."

Quinney gnashed his teeth. The history of that unhappy transaction was now known to him. He knew where the commode was, and what price had been paid for it.

"With luck," continued Tomlin thoughtfully, "I might sell these chairs for fifty apiece. One is an armchair. Your covers would go nicely on 'em, eh?"

"By Gum, the very thing."

"And you've eight covers?"

"Eight of the best."

Tomlin stared hard at the little man.

"Let's have a look at the covers," he said slowly.

They returned to Soho Square. Somewhat to Quinney's astonishment he found Posy in James's room. Her presence, however, was easily and glibly explained. James, obeying orders, had asked his employer's daughter for some cleaning fluid. She had just brought him some. That was all. Quinney frowned, and signified with a gesture that Posy could "scoot." She did so, after exchanging greetings with Tomlin.

"Dev'lish fine gal!" said Tomlin. "Glad to see she's not above helpin' in the business."

"Don't want her help!" growled Quinney. He turned savagely to James:

"Didn't I tell you not to show them covers to nobody?"

"Sorry," replied James carelessly. "I supposed Miss Quinney would be considered an exception." He added, with mild derision, "She took no interest in the covers at all."

"She saw them?" snapped Quinney.

"Possibly," said James.

Tomlin examined them carefully, nodding his big head, getting redder than usual as he bent down. James had removed one cover.

"They're a bit of all right," pronounced Tomlin.

Quinney led the way upstairs into the sanctuary. Posy was there, cleaning some beautiful glass lustres. Her father addressed her snappishly:

"Look ye here, young woman, I don't want you nosin' about downstairs. See?"

Posy tossed her head, furious with her father because he rebuked her before Tomlin. She replied coldly:

"I thought I could go where I liked in our own house."

"It's my house. See? You run along to mother like a good girl."

With immense dignity Posy moved to the door. If she wanted to impress upon her father that she was now a woman grown, she succeeded admirably. As the door closed behind her, Tomlin said:

"Bit short with her, wasn't you?"

"Do her good. I won't have no tête-à-têtin' between her and James Miggott."

I

They sat down. Quinney pushed a box of cigars across his desk. It annoyed him slightly that Tomlin selected one with unflattering suspicion, smelling it, and putting it to his ear.

"It's all right, Tom: I only smoke the best in this room."

Tomlin lit the cigar, inhaled the smoke, and nodded approvingly:

"Must admit, Joe, that you know a bit about most things. Come on surprisingly, you have."

At this Quinney smiled complacently. Tomlin continued, eyeing his companion shrewdly and genially:

"I've a proposition to lay before you, Joe."

"Go ahead."

Tomlin rose, walked to the door, and opened it. He closed it softly and came back.

"Whatever are you up to, old man?"

Tomlin grinned.

"My women," he remarked pensively, "listen at doors."

Quinney exploded.

"And you dare to think that——?"

"Tch! Tch! Nothing like making cocksure. What I have to say is not for other ears. Now, ain't it a pity that we haven't eight o' them Chippendale chairs on which we could fit them eight fine covers?"

"Pity? It's a sinful shame."

"Almost a dooty we owe to society to turn them four into eight?"

"Hey?"

"James could do it."

"Are you mad, Tom? We know what James can do. I ain't denyin' that he's a wonder, but he can't copy them chairs so that you and I, not to mention the rest of 'em, wouldn't know the difference if the new four was shoved alongside o' the old four."

"Right!"

"Then what the 'ell are you at?"

Sinking his voice to a hoarse whisper, and leaning forward across the desk, the great Tomlin unfolded his scheme.

"I propose this," he said deliberately. "James can make eight chairs out of them four by breaking up the four, half and half, half of the old in each."

"Um!" said Quinney.

"If the worst came to the worst," continued Tomlin, "if any of 'em did drop on to the fact that the set of eight had been very considerably restored, what of it?"

"Um!" repeated Quinney.