"Sonny," said Smithies, "you're in the clutches of a dangerous man. Mawdster's all 'butter' to your face, all vinegar behind your back. Chairman of 'Welfare' Societies, yet the most uncharitable hypocrite you could meet in a month of Sundays. Always trying to worm himself in with the nobility and gentry—you know the sort of viper I mean. He'll give you short shrift, lad, if you don't steal a march on him."
"But what can I do?" asked Dick, gloomily.
"Pay his bill and have done with him."
"As easy as catching trout with a bent pin. I haven't the money."
"Pooh! That's soon settled. Wait there till I count it out. How much? Shall we say ten or twenty pounds? We'll be on the safe side and call it thirty."
Dick sprang to his feet in evident concern.
"Oh, I say, you know, this will never do. I—I didn't come here to cadge. I wanted you to give me your advice—not your money."
"Softly, softly, my young friend. You've made me count 'em wrong—I must begin again. Who the dickens said I was going to give you money? This is a business transaction, pure and simple. I'm going to lend you the cash to pay off that loathsome toady, Aaron Mawdster. You're just shifting your obligations, lad, from a black man to a 'white' one."
"But I really can't accept your—your splendid generosity," Dick managed to say. He was almost stupefied by the bookmaker's immediate and practical response to his tale of woe. "What guarantee have you that I shall ever pay you back? None whatever!"
"Lad, I prefer some people's honest faces to other people's dishonest signatures. I'll trust you with my money—I'd trust you with my life. Still, don't run away with the idea that this is a favour I'm doing you. It isn't. You'll pay me five per cent on the money when you return it, and that's more than I'd get on it if it were lying idle in the bank. Choose your own time for repayment—I shan't miss that little lot for a year or two. Now, run off and get out of Mawdster's debt, there's a dear lad. I only wish I could come with you, and see his ugly face drop when you pay him!"