“Oh, here’s wickedness! Here’s fraud and everything! Fifty guineas to me to look at a room? Why, it’s almost burglary.”
“Not at all,” said Blanche stoutly. “If they don’t like your taste, that’s their funeral. They shouldn’t have bought it. But they will. You’ve a splendid eye. Besides, they won’t know any better. And we must ask a wicked price, otherwise no one will buy. The world takes you at your own valuation—always. I forget who said that, but he knew. Besides, we must become the vogue: and you can’t do that unless you’re irrationally dear. Once you’re off it’s too easy. People will simply love to be able to say, ‘This is a Cheviot room,’ because it’ll be tantamount to saying, ‘I’m so rich that I blued a hundred on this room before ever the paper went up.’ ”
“It’s a hundred now,” said Titus. “I’m getting all hot in the palms. Never mind. Ramp or no, I’m beginnin’ to see your point. An’, to tell you the truth, I could do with a bit of work—nice, gentle exercise, you know, entailing extended week-ends and entirely suspended during the more important race-meetings.”
“That’s the idea,” said Blanche. “Now what about a pitch?”
Her husband looked down his nose.
“That telephone-call was from Forsyth. He wants to know if I’ll take five hundred a year for——”
Blanche leaped to her feet.
“Not 68, Old Bond Street?”
Titus nodded.
“Only the shop, you know. The rest of it’s let. Nearly half our income comes from that little old house.”