"Are you selling?" said Hancock, "that's more to the point."
"Oh yes, I'm selling—mildly."
"Um!"
"I sold two pictures quite recently."
"I always told you," said the lawyer, ignoring the last statement in a most irritating way, and speaking as if Leavesley were made of glass and all his affairs were arranged inside him for view like damaged goods in a shop window—"I always told you painting doesn't pay. If you had come into the office you might have got on well; but there you are, you've made your bed, and on it you must lie," then in a voice three shades gloomier, "on it you must lie."
Leavesley glanced at the office clock, it pointed to quarter past ten, and Fanny was due at one.
"I had a little business to talk to you about," he said. "Look here, will you give me a commission?"
"A what?"
"A commission for a picture."
"And five pounds on account," was in his brain, but it did not pass his tongue.