some other absurd and fanciful date that you've just _thought
about_. But now, _do_ have the thing finished by tomorrow--" here he
laid his hand cajoling on Arthur's arm. "You promise me it will all
be ready by tomorrow, don't you?"

"Yes, I'll do it if anybody could do it."

"Don't say 'if anybody could do it.' Say it shall be done."

"It shall if I can possibly manage it--"

"Oh--very well then. Mind you manage it--and thank you _very_ much.
I shall be _most_ obliged, if it _is_ done."

Arthur was annoyed, but he was kept to the scratch. And so, early in
October the place was ready, and Woodhouse was plastered with
placards announcing "Houghton's Pleasure Palace." Poor Mr. May could
not but see an irony in the Palace part of the phrase. "We can
guarantee the _pleasure_," he said. "But personally, I feel I can't
take the responsibility for the palace."

But James, to use the vulgar expression, was in his eye-holes.

"Oh, father's in his eye-holes," said Alvina to Mr. May.

"Oh!" said Mr. May, puzzled and concerned.

But it merely meant that James was having the time of his life. He
was drawing out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion
strips, with the mystic script, in big black letters: Houghton's
Picture Palace, underneath which, quite small: Opens at Lumley on
October 7th, at 6:30 P.M. Everywhere you went, these vermilion and
black bars sprang from the wall at you. Then there were other
notices, in delicate pale-blue and pale red, like a genuine theatre
notice, giving full programs. And beneath these a broad-letter
notice announced, in green letters on a yellow ground: "Final and
Ultimate Clearance Sale at Houghton's, Knarborough Road, on Friday,
September 30th. Come and Buy Without Price."

James was in his eye-holes. He collected all his odds and ends from
every corner of Manchester House. He sorted them in heaps, and
marked the heaps in his own mind. And then he let go. He pasted up
notices all over the window and all over the shop: "Take what you
want and Pay what you Like."

He and Miss Pinnegar kept shop. The women flocked in. They turned
things over. It nearly killed James to take the prices they offered.
But take them he did. But he exacted that they should buy one
article at a time. "One piece at a time, if you don't mind," he
said, when they came up with their three-a-penny handfuls. It was
not till later in the evening that he relaxed this rule.

Well, by eleven o'clock he had cle