Mr. Meggison winked solemnly. "A little exaggel-exaggeration," he replied. "Splendid notion! Goo' night!"
CHAPTER VII
FAREWELL TO ARCADIA STREET
THE morning which followed that night of wild exaggerations found Mr. Daniel Meggison in a despairing mood. He knew that he had gone too far—understood that he had plunged not only himself but others into this new sea of deceit in which they must all struggle together, and from which only one hand—that of Mr. Gilbert Byfield—could drag them. In the calmer mood following upon a severe headache, and a petulant remembrance of certain absurd statements of the night before, Meggison saw that he must substantiate much of what had been said at the earliest possible opportunity. Bessie believed in him, and Bessie would require to be satisfied; if even that considerable sum of fifty pounds was to be wrung out of the matter, the game must be kept alive, for a few days at least.
In a sense, however, Bessie had taken the matter out of his hands. Her belief in him was so sublime and so fine that she had absolutely taken him at his word; and that morning the one or two lodgers who only paid when they were driven to it, and the one or two others who paid when by chance they had any money, had special interviews with a radiant girl in a shabby black frock, who told them with shining eyes that she was sorry to get rid of them, and that the bills did not matter. The house was to be given up; they were retiring to the country. So the lodgers went away puzzled, thereafter to make arrangements for other lodgings, where it was to be feared they might not find landladies who would deal with them so generously.
Two lodgers were difficult to deal with: poor Harry Dorricott for one, and Simon Quarle for another. It was hard to turn Harry out into the world—harder still to make him understand that in one night his divinity had been removed far out of his reach. He did not understand in the least; he pleaded that he might have the new address, so that in time to come he could forward his long overdue account. For the rest, she cut short as delicately as she could his farewells and his protestations.
It was not so easy to get rid of Mr. Simon Quarle. Mr. Simon Quarle usually breakfasted late, because there was no business which claimed him, as in the case of the others; and this morning Bessie came upon him with a newspaper propped up against the cruet, and with a fork busily going over a breakfast that had been already cut up for greater expedition in eating. He looked up at her quickly as she came into the room, and then frowningly resumed his breakfast and his newspaper; which was in a sense his habit.
"If you please, Mr. Quarle—if I might speak to you," she began.
"Which is exactly what you're doing, you know," he retorted, not unkindly.