"'Nothing venture!'"
"All right!" The cue struck, the ball rolled. "There!"
"Bad luck! Never mind!"
Then they saw him, and Soames said: "I'll mark for you."
He sat down on the raised seat beneath the marker, trim and tired, furtively studying those two young faces. When the game was over Mont came up to him. "I've started in, sir. Rum game, business, isn't it? I suppose you saw a lot of human nature as a solicitor."
"I did."
"Shall I tell you what I've noticed: People are quite on the wrong track in offering less than they can afford to give; they ought to offer more, and work backward."
Soames raised his eyebrows. "Suppose the more is accepted?"
"That doesn't matter a little bit," said Mont; "it's much more paying to abate a price than to increase it. For instance, say we offer an author good terms—he naturally takes them. Then we go into it, find we can't publish at a decent profit and tell him so. He's got confidence in us because we've been generous to him, and he comes down like a lamb, and bears us no malice. But if we offer him poor terms at the start, he doesn't take them, so we have to advance them to get him, and he thinks us damned screws into the bargain."
"Try buying pictures on that system"; said Soames, "an offer accepted is a contract—haven't you learned that?"