“Yes, sir; yes, sir,” said the waiter, who was dispensing wine as fast as a waiter can.

The auction commenced.

Seizing the hammer, the auctioneer gave a short biography of William Clews Mericarp, and, this pious duty accomplished, called upon a solicitor to read the conditions of sale.  The solicitor complied and made a distressing exhibition of self-consciousness.  The conditions of sale were very lengthy, and apparently composed in a foreign tongue; and the audience listened to this elocution with a stoical pretence of breathless interest.

Then the auctioneer put up all that extensive and commodious messuage and shop situate and being No. 4, St. Luke’s Square.  Constance and Cyril moved their limbs surreptitiously, as though being at last found out.  The auctioneer referred to John Baines and to Samuel Povey, with a sense of personal loss, and then expressed his pleasure in the presence of ‘the ladies;’ he meant Constance, who once more had to blush.

“Now, gentlemen,” said the auctioneer, “what do you say for these famous premises?  I think I do not exaggerate when I use the word ‘famous.’”

Some one said a thousand pounds, in the terrorized voice of a delinquent.

“A thousand pounds,” repeated the auctioneer, paused, sipped, and smacked.

“Guineas,” said another voice self-accused of iniquity.

“A thousand and fifty,” said the auctioneer.

Then there was a long interval, an interval that tightened the nerves of the assembly.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” the auctioneer adjured.

The first voice said sulkily:  “Eleven hundred.”

And thus the bids rose to fifteen hundred, lifted bit by bit, as it were, by the magnetic force of the auctioneer’s personality.  The man was now standing up, in domination.  He bent down to the solicitor’s head; they whispered together.

“Gentlemen,” said the auctioneer, “I am happy to inform you that the sale is now open.”  His tone translated better than words his calm professional beatitude.  Suddenly in a voice of wrath he hissed at the waiter:  “Waiter, why don’t you serve these gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir; yes, sir.”

The auctioneer sat down and sipped at leisure, chatting with his clerk and the solicitor and the solicitor’s clerk.

When he rose it was as a conqueror.  “Gentlemen, fifteen hundred is bid.  Now, Mr. Critchlow.”

Mr. Critchlow shook his head.  The auctioneer threw a courteous glance at Constance, who avoided it.

After many adjurations, he reluctantly raised his hammer, pretended to let it fall, and saved it several times.

And then Mr. Critchlow said:  “And fifty.”

“Fifteen hundred and fifty is bid,” the auctioneer informed the company, electrifying the waiter once more.  And when he had sipped he said, with feigned sadness:  “Come, gentlemen, you surely don’t mean to let this magnificent lot go for fifteen hundred and fifty pounds?”