“Now, look here,” said Dicky, “you call yourself an artist.  Well—­this business of mine isn’t a business, it’s an art.  Think of the delicacy we ’ave to use.  To know to a hairsbreadth how far you can go with a man, to know when to give him his head with the snaffle and when to draw him in with the curb.  It’s a feelin’ your way all along.  Why, I knew a fellow, a broker—­an uncommonly clever chap he was, too—­ruined just for want of a little tact.  He was too precipitate, began hauling his man up just when he ought to have let him go.  He’d no imagination, that fellow. (Don’t you go eating too much cake, Popsie, or you’ll make your little nose red.) I don’t know any other profession gives you such a grip of life and such a feelin’ of power.  You’ve got some young devil plungin’ about, kickin’ up his heels all over the shop, say.  He thinks he’s got the whole place to break his neck in; and you know the exact minute by your watch that you can bring him in grovellin’ on your office floor.  It’s the iron ’and in the velvet glove,” said Dicky.

“I know what you’re driving at, and I call it a beastly shame.”

“No, it isn’t.  I shouldn’t wonder if old Rickets paid up all right, after all.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“If he doesn’t—­Well—­”

“I say, though, think wot a lot he’s paid you.  Can’t you let him go?”

Dicky shook his head and smiled softly as at some interior vision.

“You’ll ruin him for a dirty fifty pounds?”

“I won’t ruin him.  And it isn’t for the money, it’s for the game.  I like,” said Dicky, “to see a man play in first-class style.  But I don’t blame him if he hasn’t got style so long as he’s got pluck.  In fact, I don’t know that of the two I wouldn’t rather have pluck.  I’ve seen a good many men play this game, but I’ve never seen any one who came up to old Razors for pluck and style.  It’s a treat to see him.  Do you suppose I’m going to cut in now and spoil it all by giving him points?  That would take all the gilt off the gingerbread.  And do you suppose he’d let me?  Not he; he’s spreading the gilt on thick, and he’d see me d——­d first.”

Dicky smoked, with half-closed eyes fixed on the fire, in speechless admiration.  He felt that he was encouraging the display of high heroism by watching it.  He singled out a beautiful writhing flame, spat at it, and continued:  “No, I’ll take good care that Rickets doesn’t starve.  But I’m going to stand by and see him finish fair.  If you like, Popsie, you can back him to win.  I don’t care if he doe’ win.  It would be worth it for what I’ve got out of him.”

By what he had got out of him Dicky meant, not three thousand seven hundred and odd pounds, but a spectacle beyond all comparison exciting and sublime.  For that he was prepared to abandon any further advantage that might be wrung from the Harden library by a successful manipulation of the sales.

Poppy did not back Rickman to win; but she determined to call on him at his rooms, and leave a little note with a cheque and a request that he would pay Dicky and have done with him.  “You’d better owe it to me than to him, old chappy”; thus she wrote in the kindness and impropriety of her heart.  But Rickman never got that little note.