“I’ve mislaid it.  That’s not my business either.  My business is to send you off before they find out their mistake.  You can catch the eleven express from Waterloo if you look sharp.”

Sharp?  Never had he looked less so.  Still, with his aching head he dimly perceived that his Easter was being tampered with.

“And supposing they want me to stay?”

“Stay then.  The longer the better.”

“I’ll go after Easter then.  I can’t go before.  I can’t possibly.  It’s—­it’s out of the question.”

His brain was clear enough on that point.  He had suffered many things from the brutality of Rickman’s; but hitherto its dealings had always been plain and above-board.  It had kept him many an evening working overtime, it had even exacted an occasional Saturday afternoon; but it had never before swindled him out of a Bank holiday.  The thing was incredible; it could not be.  Rickman’s had no rights over his Easter; whatever happened, that holy festival was indubitably, incontestably his.

“Don’t be afraid.  You’ll get your holiday, my boy, when you come back.  I’ll make it worth your while.”

“It isn’t money—­damn my head!  It’s so confoundedly inconvenient.  You see, I’d made no end of engagements.”

“It’s a foolish thing to make engagements so long beforehand.  We never know the day or the hour—­”

“I knew both.”

“Well, in any case you couldn’t be going to any place of amusement on the Sunday.”

Isaac and his conscience had agreed together to assume that young Keith walked habitually and of his own fancy in the right way.

“Come,” he continued, “you’re not going to fling up a chance like this without rhyme or reason.”

“I don’t know,” said Keith, with a queer little one-sided smile, “I’d fling up a good many chances for a really good rhyme.”

As for reason, there were at least two reasons why the present chance should not lightly be let go.  One was the Harden Library.  If the Harden Library was not great, it was almost historic, it contained the Aldine Plato of 1513, the Neapolitan Horace of 1474, and the Aurea Legenda of Wynkyn de Worde.  The other reason was Dicky Pilkington, the Vandal into whose hands destiny had delivered it.  Upon the Harden Library Pilkington was about to descend like Alaric on the treasures of Rome.  Rickman’s was hand in glove with Pilkington, and since the young barbarian actually offered them the chance of buying it outright for an old song, no time was to be lost.  It would not do to trust too long to Dicky’s ignorance.  At any moment knowledge might enter into him and corrupt his soul.

No; clearly, he would have to go; he didn’t see how he was to get out of it.

Isaac became uneasy, for the spirit of imprecation sat visibly on his son’s brow.  “When I said I’d make it worth your while I meant it.”

“I know.  It isn’t that—­”

“Wot is it?  Wot is it then?  Wot’s the matter with you?  Wot tomfoolery are you up to?  Is it—­” (Isaac’s gross forehead flushed, his speech came thick through his stern lips.) “Is it a woman?”