n't taught
her how to use 'em, though. Hi, Ricky! Aren't you going to join us in
a drink?"

"No, I'm not." His tone implied that he was not going to join
Pilkington in anything.

"You seem a bit cut up on Miss Harden's account."

"If you mean that I think she's been most infernally treated, I do."

"H'm. Well, I will say the wind is not exactly tempered to that shorn
lamb. But it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Queer how
things are mixed up in this world. You wouldn't think there was much
connexion between Miss Harden and Miss Poppy Grace, would you? Well,
wot's Loocher's loss is Popsie's gain; if that's any consolation."

"I certainly don't see the connexion."

"No? I say, can't you shut the window? That d----d sea makes such a
noise I can't hear myself speak. I was going to say I'd some notion of
running Poppy on her own before long. And I think--I _think_ I can do
it out of this haul, before she signs another contract. Of course, we
expect you and your friends to back us."

Dicky's voice came slightly muffled from the depths of his long
tumbler.

Rickman turned round. "What did you say about Bacchus?" He had turned
in anger, but at the spectacle presented by Pilkington he laughed
aloud in the insolence of his youth.

"Shut that window, can't you? I say, if you can get at any of the
papers and give them the tip--"

"Well?" Rickman's hand closed fiercely over the top of a soda-water
syphon. Pilkington followed the movement with an innocent, but by no
means unobservant eye.

Only the other day they had been rivals for the favour of Miss Poppy
Grace, which seemed to be very evenly divided between them. If Rickman
had her heart, he--Pilkington--held her by the power of the purse.
Jealous he might be, but jealousy counted for little in the great mind
of Pilkington. Human passions were the stuff he worked in. Where they
raged highest it was his to ride on the whirlwind and direct the
storm. If in Poppy's case they raged too high, his position as
creditor gave him a tight grip of young Rickman. On the other hand,
Rickman was now a full-fledged Junior Journalist, and Pilkington, amid
the wreck of morals and the crash of creeds, had preserved a simple
childlike faith in the omnipotence of the press. So, if it was madness
for Rickman to irritate Pilkington, it was not altogether expedient
for Pilkington to irritate him.

"Look here, Razors," said he, "you needn't go shying any syphons
about. There's n