“Oh, rather. Of course you can.”
There was another pause.
“You’ll think—” Nelly’s pale face flushed. “You’ll think I told you all about myself just—just because I wanted to …”
“To make a touch? Absolutely not! Kid yourself of the jolly old superstition entirely. You see before you, old thing, a chappie who knows more about borrowing money than any man in London. I mean to say, I’ve had my ear bitten more often than anyone, I should think. There are sixty-four ways of making a touch—I’ve had them all worked on me by divers blighters here and there—and I can tell any of them with my eyes shut. I know you weren’t dreaming of any such thing.”
The note crackled musically in Nelly’s hand.
“I don’t know what to say!”
“That’s all right.”
“I don’t see why … Gee! I wish I could tell you what I think of you!”
Freddie laughed amusedly.
“Do you know,” he said, “that’s exactly what the beaks—the masters, you know,—used to say to me at school.”