if "terms" they could be called--that he had
ended by accepting from herself; they had burdened her memory as little
as her conscience. "Oh yes, I see what you mean--you've been very nice
about that; but why drag it in so often?" She had been perfectly urbane
with him ever since the rough scene of explanation in his room the
morning he made her accept _his_ "terms"--the necessity of his making his
case known to Morgan. She had felt no resentment after seeing there was
no danger Morgan would take the matter up with her. Indeed, attributing
this immunity to the good taste of his influence with the boy, she had
once said to Pemberton "My dear fellow, it's an immense comfort you're a
gentleman." She repeated this in substance now. "Of course you're a
gentleman--that's a bother the less!" Pemberton reminded her that he had
not "dragged in" anything that wasn't already in as much as his foot was
in his shoe; and she also repeated her prayer that, somewhere and
somehow, he would find her sixty francs. He took the liberty of hinting
that if he could find them it wouldn't be to lend them to _her_--as to
which he consciously did himself injustice, knowing that if he had them
he would certainly put them at her disposal. He accused himself, at
bottom and not unveraciously, of a fantastic, a demoralised sympathy with
her. If misery made strange bedfellows it also made strange sympathies.
It was moreover a part of the abasement of living with such people that
one had to make vulgar retorts, quite out of one's own tradition of good
manners. "Morgan, Morgan, to what pass have I come for you?" he groaned
while Mrs. Moreen floated voluminously down the sala again to liberate
the boy, wailing as she went that everything was too odious.

Before their young friend was liberated there came a thump at the door
communicating with the staircase, followed by the apparition of a
dripping youth who poked in his head. Pemberton recognised him as the
bearer of a telegram and recognised the telegram as addressed to himself.
Morgan came back as, after glancing at the signature--that of a relative
in London--he was reading the words: "Found a jolly job for you,
engagement to coach opulent youth on own terms. Come at once." The
answer happily was paid and the messenger waited. Morgan, who had drawn
near, waited too and looked hard at Pemberton; and Pemberton, after a
moment, having met his look, handed him the telegram. It was really by
w