He was squinting at the paper as he held it up, and rubbing his jaw, stuck out at an angle, grittily.
“H’m!” he said, quite suddenly, “I’d go out for a walk and revive myself, if I were you. I intend to hold you to that piano, for my part; and you wouldn’t be edified.”
“No,” I said: “I’ve had enough of music for a lifetime or so! I fancy I’ll go, if you won’t think me rude.”
“On the contrary,” he murmured, in an absorbed way; and I left him.
I took a longish spin, and returned, on the whole refreshed, in a couple of hours. He was still there; but he had finished, it appeared, with the piano.
“Well,” he said, rising and yawning, “you’ve been a deuce of a time gone; but here you are”—and he held out to me indifferently a little crackling bundle.
Without a word I took it from his hand—parted, stretched, and explored it.
“Good God!” I gasped: “five notes of a thousand apiece!”
He was rolling a cigarette.
“Yes,” he drawled, “that’s the figure, I believe.”