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But he forced an agreeably abstracted expression on to his face (no unseemly expectancy of what was about to happen, yet . . . in a musing of a happy kind, so that if anything did drop in his lap it would be received benignly, without too crudely abrupt a change of countenance).

'I say, Percy, I ought not to take this you know! I am quite serious,' he protested, as Percy placed an envelope upon the table beside him. 'You're a terrific brick!' (He supposed that 'brick' was the kind of idiot word that belonged to the vocabulary of this sort of homunculus.) 'But I know I should refuse!'

'Nonsense, my dear chap!'

René looked up quickly at the word 'nonsense'.

'I don't know what Hester would say if she could see me pocketing this,' as he picked up the envelope and put it in his breast pocket. He almost laughed at the thought of Hester's disgust at the sight of a thousand quid. 'Hester always says I have no proper pride.'

'She will soon get over it, I expect.' For this was rather in excess of what could be absorbed by the homunculus on the serious level.