"My dear chap, you didn't think I'd finished, surely! I was only trying to find some description that would suit you. But it's no good. I can't. Look here, take my advice—the advice," he added, in the melodramatic voice he was in the habit of using whenever he wished to conceal the fact that he was speaking seriously, "of an old man who wishes ye both well. Go to Kennedy, fling yourself on his chest, and say, 'We have done those things which we ought not to have done—' No. As you were! Compn'y, 'shun! Say 'J. Silver says that I am a rotter. I am a worm. I have made an ass of myself. But I will be good. Shake, pard!' That's what you've got to do. Come in."
And in had come Kennedy. The attractions of Kay's were small, and he usually looked in on Jimmy Silver in the afternoons.
"Oh, sorry," he said, as he saw Fenn. "I thought you were alone, Jimmy."
"I was just going," said Fenn, politely.
"Oh, don't let me disturb you," protested Kennedy, with winning courtesy.
"Not at all," said Fenn.
"Oh, if you really were—"
"Oh, yes, really."
"Get out, then," growled Jimmy, who had been listening in speechless disgust to the beautifully polite conversation just recorded. "I'll forward that bronze medal to you, Fenn."
And as the door closed he had turned to rend Kennedy as he had rent Fenn; while Fenn walked back to Kay's feeling that there was a good deal in what Jimmy had said.