prove he hadn't meant what he said, not only hurried him off to the
Consulate--since he was to start that evening, as he had wired to his
friend--but made sure of their affair by going with him. They splashed
through the tortuous perforations and over the humpbacked bridges, and
they passed through the Piazza, where they saw Mr. Moreen and Ulick go
into a jeweller's shop. The Consul proved accommodating--Pemberton said
it wasn't the letter, but Morgan's grand air--and on their way back they
went into Saint Mark's for a hushed ten minutes. Later they took up and
kept up the fun of it to the very end; and it seemed to Pemberton a part
of that fun that Mrs. Moreen, who was very angry when he had announced
her his intention, should charge him, grotesquely and vulgarly and in
reference to the loan she had vainly endeavoured to effect, with bolting
lest they should "get something out" of him. On the other hand he had to
do Mr. Moreen and Ulick the justice to recognise that when on coming in
they heard the cruel news they took it like perfect men of the world.




CHAPTER VIII


When he got at work with the opulent youth, who was to be taken in hand
for Balliol, he found himself unable to say if this aspirant had really
such poor parts or if the appearance were only begotten of his own long
association with an intensely living little mind. From Morgan he heard
half a dozen times: the boy wrote charming young letters, a patchwork of
tongues, with indulgent postscripts in the family Volapuk and, in little
squares and rounds and crannies of the text, the drollest
illustrations--letters that he was divided between the impulse to show