Ten shillings would feed him for a week. He strode out of the shop again with the ten shillings in his pocket and the seventeen pounds safe in the keeping of the high priest. There was a man who owed him fourteen shillings, and who, when the time came to go to Venice, might possibly be induced to part with that necessary ten, if he were asked for it as a loan. A man will willingly lend you ten shillings if he owes you fourteen; it is the paying you back that he does not like.
As he passed out into the street, John kept his face rigidly averted from the little Nankin milk jug. He had played that milk jug a sly, and a nasty trick. It was really nothing to be proud about.
When he returned to Number 39, there was a man waiting outside his door, a man dressed in a light-brown tweed, the colour of ripening corn. He had on a shiny-red silk tie, adorned with a pin--a horseshoe set with pearls. His face was round, fat and solemn--the solemnity that made you laugh. He put John in good spirits from the loss of the Nankin milk jug, the moment he saw him. Someone had left the door into the street open and so he had come upstairs.
"Who are you?" asked John.
"Well--my name's Chesterton, sir, Arthur Chesterton."
John opened his door with the innocence of a babe, and the man followed him into the room, closely at his heels.
"And what do you want?" asked John.
Mr. Chesterton handed him a paper. John looked it through.
"Yes--of course--my two quarter's rent. They shall be paid," he said easily. "There's money due to me next month."
Mr. Chesterton coughed behind his hand.