how much more
so now when he was about to stake the greater part of his substance! It
was a serious thing for him.

Of course, the investment was a good one and Segouin had managed to give
the impression that it was by a favour of friendship the mite of Irish
money was to be included in the capital of the concern. Jimmy had a
respect for his father's shrewdness in business matters and in this case
it had been his father who had first suggested the investment; money to
be made in the motor business, pots of money. Moreover Segouin had the
unmistakable air of wealth. Jimmy set out to translate into days' work
that lordly car in which he sat. How smoothly it ran. In what style they
had come careering along the country roads! The journey laid a magical
finger on the genuine pulse of life and gallantly the machinery of human
nerves strove to answer the bounding courses of the swift blue animal.

They drove down Dame Street. The street was busy with unusual
traffic, loud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient
tram-drivers. Near the Bank Segouin drew up and Jimmy and his friend
alighted. A little knot of people collected on the footpath to pay
homage to the snorting motor. The party was to dine together that
evening in Segouin's hotel and, meanwhile, Jimmy and his friend, who was
staying with him, were to go home to dress. The car steered out slowly
for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way through
the knot of gazers. They walked northward with a curious feeling of
disappointment in the exercise, while the city hung its pale globes of
light above them in a haze of summer evening.

In Jimmy's house this dinner had been pronounced an occasion. A certain
pride mingled with his parents' trepidation, a certain eagerness, also,
to play fast and loose for the names of great foreign cities have at
least this virtue. Jimmy, too, looked very well when he was dressed and,
as he stood in the hall giving a last equation to the bows of his dress
tie, his father may have felt even commercially satisfied at having
secured for his son qualities often unpurchaseable. His father,
therefore, was unusually friendly with Villona and his manner expressed
a real respect for foreign accomplishments; but this subtlety of his
host was probably lost upon the Hungarian, who was beginning to have a
sharp desire for his dinner.

The dinner was excellent, exquisite. Segouin, Jimmy decided, had a very
refined taste. The p