“Look here now,” said Mr. Spinks, now scarlet with fury, “you needn’t throw his business in his face, for he’s chucked it.”

“I don’t think any the better of him for that.”

“Don’t you?  Well, he won’t worry himself into fits about your opinion.”

“’Ad he got a new berth then, when he flung up the old one?”

Now one thing Mrs. Downey, with all her indulgence, did not permit, and that was any public allusion to her boarders’ affairs.  She might not refuse to discuss them privately with Miss Bramble or Miss Roots, but that was a very different thing.  Therefore she maintained a dignified silence.

“Well, then, I should like to know ’ow he’s going to pay ’is way.”

Before the grossness of this insinuation Mrs. Downey abandoned her policy of silence.

“Some day,” said Mrs. Downey, “Mr. Rickman will be in a very different position to wot he is now.  You mark my words.” (And nobody marked them but little Flossie Walker.)

Two tears rolled down Mrs. Downey’s face and mingled with the tartan of her blouse.  A murmur of sympathy went round the room, and Mr. Soper perceived that the rest of the company were sitting in an atmosphere of emotion from which he was shut out.

“I beg of you, Mr. Soper, that you will let Mr. Rickman be, for once this evening.  Living together as we do, we all ought,” said Mrs. Downey, “to respect each other’s feelings.”

“Ah—­feelings.  Wot sort of respect does your young gentleman ever show to mine?  Takes me up one day and cuts me dead the next.”

“He wouldn’t have dreamed of such a thing if he hadn’t been worried in his mind.  Mr. Rickman, Mr. Soper, is in trouble.”

Mr. Soper was softened.  “Is he?  Well, really, I’m very sorry to hear it, very sorry, I’m sure.”

“My fear is,” said Mrs. Downey, controlling her voice with difficulty, “that he may be leaving us.”

“If he does, Mrs. Downey, nobody will regret it more than I do.”

“Well, I hope it won’t come to that.”

Mrs. Downey did not consider it politic to add that she was prepared to make any sacrifice to prevent it.  It was as well that Mr. Soper should realize the consequences of an inability to pay your way.  She was not prepared to make any sacrifice for the sake of keeping him.

“But what,” said Mrs. Downey to herself, “will the Dinner be without Mr. Rickman?”

The Dinner was, in her imagination, a function, a literary symposium.  At the present moment, if you were to believe Mrs. Downey, no dinner-table in London could show such a gathering of remarkable people.  But to none of these remarkable people did Mrs. Downey feel as she felt to Mr. Rickman, who was the most remarkable of them all.  By her own statement she had enjoyed exceptional opportunities for studying the ways of genius.  There was a room at Mrs. Downey’s which she exhibited with pride as “Mr. Blenkinsop’s