"Why can't you finish one thing before starting another?" demanded the Poet hectoringly. "You haven't YET found me any quarters, and you call yourself a business man. I shall of course stay on here till your return…"
The Iron King shook his head gravely.
"That's impossible," he interrupted. "My young secretary…"
"You must take her with you," answered the Poet obstinately.
The subject was not pursued, but at bed time the Iron King roundly asked the Poet how much he would take to go away.
"I require a home," answered the Poet frigidly, remembering the weary day spent by him in discovering the Glebe Place studio and the weary night spent by the Iron King in recommending Kensington boarding houses. "I do not want your money."
"We shan't fall out over a pound or two," urged the Iron King with a meaning motion of the hand towards his breast pocket.
"A thing is either a promise or it is not a promise," replied the Poet, as he turned on his heel. "I know nothing of business or what people are pleased to term 'commercial morality.'"
Four weeks later the Poet left Eaton Square for the Private Secretary's rooms in Bury Street. He looked thin and anemic after his month of privations, for the Iron King, improving in morale and recapturing something of the old strike-breaking spirit, had counter-attacked on the third day of the Poet's visit. The chauffeur, butler and two footmen, all of military age, had been claimed on successive appeals as indispensable, but on their last appearance at the Tribunal the Iron King had unprotestingly presented them to the Army. This he followed by breakfasting in bed, lunching in the city, dining at his club and leaving neither instructions nor money for the maintenance of the household. For a time the Poet was saved from the greater starvation by the care of the pretty young secretary, but without an Iron King there was no need for a foil. Sharp words were exchanged one morning over the propriety of grounds in coffee; the pretty young secretary declared that she would "have nothink more to do with him or his old potry"; and in the afternoon he packed his trunks with his own hands and with his own hands dragged them downstairs on to the pavement, leaving the pretty young secretary biting viciously at the corner of a crumpled handkerchief drenched in "White Rose."
The Private Secretary received him in a manner different from that adopted by either the Millionaire or the Iron King. The two men were of nearly the same age, but in a deferential, if mis-spent life the Private Secretary had learned to be non-committal. Well he knew that he had but one bedroom; well he knew that, on admitting it, the Poet would claim it from him.