"Always the wise thing to do. My offer holds good for twenty-four hours. Isn’t Tomlin a friend of yours?" "We’ve had many dealings together." "He might pay more." "Not he. I’ll accept your offer, Mr. Lark, with many thanks. I’ll not forget this." Gustavus returned to Oxford Street. He sold the commode to an American millionaire for two thousand five hundred pounds, but Quinney, fortunately for his peace of mind, never discovered this till some years had passed. He told Tom Tomlin that Lark was a perfect gentleman, and that the story of the Rapper and the London "Cries" was a malicious lie on the face of it. Tomlin sniffed. *CHAPTER XI* *MORE BLUDGEONINGS* *I* The loss of four hundred pounds stimulated our hero to greater efforts. Deep down in his heart, moreover, lay the desire to rehabilitate himself. Susan had spared him exasperating reproaches, but he perceived, so he fancied, pity in her faithful eyes. Her ministrations recalled that humiliating Channel crossing, when his superiority as a male had been buried in a basin! Let us admit that he wanted to play the god with Susan, to shake the sphere of home with his Olympian nod, to hear her soft ejaculation: "Joe, dear, you are wonderful!" At this crisis in his fortunes he found himself, for the first time in his life, with time on his hands. His premises were overstocked to such an extent that he dared not run the temptation of attending sales. To succeed greatly, he only needed customers, and they shunned him as if Soho Square were an infected district. It began to strike him that he had embarked upon a highly speculative business. Tomlin was clear upon this point. "It’s a gamble if you go for big things. Buying that commode was a gamble. You can’t escape from it. That’s what makes it interesting. Win a tidy bit here, lose a tidy bit there, and it’s all the same a hundred years hence." This familiar philosophy percolated through Quinney’s mind. It never occurred to him that he could be called a gambler, and yet something in him thrilled at the name. He heard Tomlin’s platitudes, and wondered why he had never thought of them before. "Farming’s gambling—a mug’s game! Sooner put my money on to a horse than into the ground! Marriage! The biggest gamble of all! You struck a winner, my lad—I didn’t." "I suppose," said Quinney, staring hard at Tomlin, "that you don’t gamble outside your business?" "Yes, I do, when I get a gilt-edged tip." "Race-horses?" "Stock Exchange. Customers tell me things. I’m fairly in the know, I am. Make a little bit, lose a little bit! It binges me up when I feel blue." "I’d like to get back a slice o’ that lost four hundred quid." "Maybe I can help you to do it. A customer of mine is in the Kaffir Market." "Kaffir Market! What’s that?" It has been said that Quinney was grossly ignorant of things outside his own business.