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To this powerful argument Theocritus immediately replied that those who looked for hens’ teeth were liable to be stung; that cigars containing explosive matter had been offered him too frequently in the past for him now to entertain the thought of consuming them; and that when he was bulling London he would advise. By which parables he intended to, and did, convey to his daughter his fixed conclusion that it was up to her to bear futures: and lest she should have failed wholly to seize his point, he told her briefly and in the plainest terms that whatever rocks were going were wanted—badly—to sling at something with more dough in it than Mayfair.

With that their brief discourse was ended.

This little conversation over, Demaine was given to understand that he might re-enter the room. He was a little shy in doing so, for interviews of this sort usually meant some new gift or subsidy, but it was shyness of a pleasant sort and he had little doubt that he should hear in a moment the extent or at least the nature of the new bounty which his young household was to receive. He was therefore only puzzled by the novelty of phrasing when his father-in-law, looking at him in a manner rather humorous than severe, remarked: