“Then always remember, I tried to make you take it back and you wouldn’t. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes, I wouldn’t.”
“Awright, I’ll do my best; but I do it under protest, don’t forget.”
“Oh, Ocky, everything that we have we share.”
He kissed her and passed out into the street with alacrity; she might get to considering his motives. But at the garden gate he hesitated, dawdled, and came back.
“Look here, I don’t want Barrington nosing into my affairs. If I do this for you it’s between ourselves.”
“I shouldn’t think of telling Barrington.”
“Well, if you breathe a word to Nan I’ll stop dead, and you can manage your investments yourself.”
So he kept to the letter of his agreement with Barrington—and he kept to Jehane’s capital. And he accomplished this by that small lie about the thirty pounds.
When Mr. Playfair had chosen Ocky Waffles to be office-manager of the Sandport Real Estate Concern, he had shown remarkable cunning. He was tricky himself and he required a subordinate who was no more scrupulous, yet a subordinate who could give to smart transactions an appearance of honesty. Mr. Playfair’s finances were scanty; in order to extend his credit it was necessary to pose in the eyes of Sandport as a civic benefactor. Outside investors were attracted by a not too truthful, but undoubtedly clever, series of advertisements for which Ocky was responsible, such as:—