“I won’t tell pater you sold Blair Airon instead of selling Black Hazel. Ain’t I magnanimous?”
He disappeared, whilst the Blenheims barked shrilly at his memory. Cocky turned into his own den and strengthened his courage with an “eye-opener” of the strongest species; then he took his way to his father’s mansion looking on St. James’s Park—a beautiful and majestic house built by Christopher Wren, and coveted ardently by an hotel company.
As he spun along the streets in a hansom, for Cocky never went a yard on foot if he could help it, he changed his intended tactics; the reformation dodge would not do; the duke, who could on occasion be disagreeably keen-sighted, would inevitably discover beneath it accepted bills and unworthy obligations.
“I’ll touch him up in his loyalty,” he thought. “The Poodle’s a Cavalier in his creeds.”
He found the duke at home with a slight touch of gout in his left foot. “I suppose he comes for money,” thought Otterbourne, for Cocky did not cross his threshold once in three months. But Cocky made it soon apparent that his motive was more disinterested.
“You wrote a very sharp note to my wife just now,” he said. “It has worried her.”
The duke looked at him with sarcastic incredulity.
“Are you going to pose as your wife’s champion? It is late in the day.”
“No, I ain’t,” said Cocky. “Do you mind my lighting up, Pater?”
Otterbourne indicated with a gesture that when anything was painful to him an unpleasant trifle did not matter. Cocky lit his cigar.