"Hope is all most of us have to live on in this land of flies and lies," he snarled. "We won't rob you of your income, Ferrand."
"Bite on that!" added Bramham without any polish of manner.
Capron had certainly succeeded in leaving an atmosphere of irritability behind him. Only Abinger remained impassive, and suavely demanded a description of the girl. Ferrand, amongst other things, was something of a poet: fire came into his eye.
"She's pale, but she glows like a rose: she has chaste eyes, but there is diablerie in the turn of her lip. She walks like a south wind on the water, and she has a rope of black hair that she can take me in tow with if she likes."
At the end of this monograph the three bad men laughed rudely, but they avoided looking at each other; for each had a curious, half-formed thought in his mind which he wished to conceal.
Bramham thought: "Part of that might fit one woman ... but it literally couldn't be her ... I wonder if I should go round and——"
"If I could be interested in a girl," thought Carson, "I might.... A rope of black hair! ... anyway, I have to go and look up Nickals at the Royal to-morrow."
"Could it possibly be that devil Poppy?" was Abinger's thought. "I shall go round and see." What he said was:
"She must be a boneless wonder!" and the others derisively agreed. They further advised Ferrand to go and lie in Hyde Park with a sheet of brown paper over him, like all the other poets out of work.
Subsequently other subjects arose. When the clock struck eleven, Ferrand departed, remembering suddenly that his long-suffering man was waiting round the corner to drive him home.