achieve. "How come he c'n talk like
that?" she demanded of herself, musing on the lodger's wonderful
exhibition over the greasy dish-water at Maverick's.

And that night she asked him, prefacing her question with the offering
of an almost perfect lamb-chop. Only one piece had been cut from it
since the purchaser, at that moment apprised by Maverick himself that
the arrival of the police was imminent, had taken a hasty departure.

"Who learned you to talk that-a-way?" demanded Cake, licking a faint,
far-away flavour of the chop from her long, thin fingers.

The lodger, for a moment, had changed places with the candle. That is
to say, he sat upon the dry-goods box, the candle burned upon the
floor. And, having been most unfortunate that day, the lodger was
tragically sober. He bit into the chop voraciously, like a dog, with
his broken, discoloured teeth.

"A book 'learned' me," he said, "and practice and experience--and
something else." He broke off short. "They called it genius then," he
said bitterly.

Cake took a short step forward. That thing beneath her prominent
breastbone pained her violently, forced her on to speak.

"You learn me," she said.

The lodger ceased to chew and stared, the chop bone uplifted in his
dirty hand. A pupil for him!

"You want to do this perhaps," he began. "Pray do not mock me; I am a
very foolish, fond old man----"

The disreputable, swollen-faced lodger with a nose like a poisoned
toadstool vanished. Cake saw an old white-haired man, crazy and
pitiful, yet bearing himself grandly. She gasped, the tears flew to
her eyes, blinding her. The lodger laughed disagreeably, he was
gnawing on the chop bone again.

"I suppose you think because you've found me here it is likely I'll
teach you--you! You starved alley cat!" he snarled.

Cake did not even blink. It is repetition that dulls, and she was
utterly familiar with abuse.

"And suppose I did--'learn' you," he sneered, "what would _you_ do
with it?"

"I would be famous," cried Cake.

Then the lodger did laugh, looking at her with his head hanging down,
his swollen face all creased and purple, his hair sticking up rough
and unkempt. He laughed, sitting there a degraded, debauched ruin,
looking down from the height of his memories upon the gaunt, unlovely
child of the slums who was rendered even more unlovely by the very
courage that kept her waiting beside the broken door.

"So you think I could learn you to be famous, hey?"