s.

"Don't be afraid. You'll get your holiday, my boy, when you come back.
I'll make it worth your while."

"It isn't money--damn my head! It's so confoundedly inconvenient. You
see, I'd made no end of engagements."

"It's a foolish thing to make engagements so long beforehand. We never
know the day or the hour--"

"I knew both."

"Well, in any case you couldn't be going to any place of amusement on
the Sunday."

Isaac and his conscience had agreed together to assume that young
Keith walked habitually and of his own fancy in the right way.

"Come," he continued, "you're not going to fling up a chance like this
without rhyme or reason."

"I don't know," said Keith, with a queer little one-sided smile, "I'd
fling up a good many chances for a really good rhyme."

As for reason, there were at least two reasons why the present chance
should not lightly be let go. One was the Harden Library. If the
Harden Library was not great, it was almost historic, it contained the
Aldine Plato of 1513, the Neapolitan Horace of 1474, and the _Aurea
Legenda_ of Wynkyn de Worde. The other reason was Dicky Pilkington,
the Vandal into whose hands destiny had delivered it. Upon the Harden
Library Pilkington was about to descend like Alaric on the treasures
of Rome. Rickman's was hand in glove with Pilkington, and since the
young barbarian actually offered them the chance of buying it outright
for an old song, no time was to be lost. It would not do to trust too
long to Dicky's ignorance. At any moment knowledge might enter into
him and corrupt his soul.

No; clearly, he would have to go; he didn't see how he was to get out
of it.

Isaac became uneasy, for the spirit of imprecation sat visibly on his
son's brow. "When I said I'd make it worth your while I meant it."

"I know. It isn't that--"

"Wot is it? Wot is it then? Wot's the matter with you? Wot tomfoolery
are you up to? Is it--" (Isaac's gross forehead flushed, his speech
came thick through his stern lips.) "Is it a woman?"

He had also been young; though he had denied his youth.

The boy's white face quivered with a little wave of heat and pain. He
clasped his forehead with his hands.

"Let me think."

His fingers tightened their hold, as if to grasp thought by holding
the dizzy aching head that contained it. He could think of nothing but
Poppy. He had seen his father's point quite steadily and clearly a
minute ago; but when he thought of Poppy his brain began to t