out of countenance.

"My dear fellow!" he interrupted ingratiatingly.

"I'm not a business man," continued the Poet hotly. "You all of
you told me that, and I'm disposed to say: 'Thank God, I'm not.'"

The Iron King put his hat carefully out of reach and forced a smile.

"You mustn't take it like that, old chap," he said soothingly.
"I--we--all of us are doing our best. Now we won't bother about
dressing; let's go straight in and thrash the thing out over a
bottle of wine."

Instructing his butler very audibly to open a bottle of the
1906 Lanson, he slipped his arm through the Poet's and led him,
sullenly murmuring, into the dining-room. With the second bottle
of champagne, his guest ceased to be aggrieved and became quarrelsome;
when the port wine appeared, he had the Iron King cowed and broken
in moral.

"If you find fault with everything, why do you come here, why stay
here?" complained the Iron King with a last flickering effort to
recover his independence.

"Why don't you find me some other place to go to, as you promised?"
the Poet retorted, as he made his way to the morning-room and sat
down to order a month's supply of underclothes from his hosier.