“I’ve dragged you into something that you don’t understand. Don’t try to understand it; but there’s something I want to say to you. If ever you’re tempted to do wrong, remember me. If ever you’re tempted to get love the wrong way, be strong enough to do without it. It isn’t worth having. You have to lie and cheat to get it at first, and you have to lie and cheat to keep some of it when it’s ended.” He turned his face away, speaking shamefully and hurriedly. “I sinned once, a long while ago--I don’t know whether you’ve guessed. I’m still paying for it. You’re paying for it. One day that little girl may have to pay the biggest price of any of us. I was trying to save her from that.” Through the window shabby rows of cabs showed up. A porter jumped on the step, asking if there was any luggage. Hal waved him back. Turning to Teddy, he said, “When you’ve sinned, you never know where the paying ends. It touches a thousand lives with its selfishness. Remember me one day, and be careful.” Driving home in the hansom, he referred but once to the subject “I’ve made you suffer. I don’t know how much--boys never tell. I owed you something; that’s why I spoke to you just now.” Teddy’s arrival home scattered the last mists of his dream-world. As the cab drew up before the house, the door flew open and his father burst out, bundling a mildly protesting old gentleman down the steps. “No, I don’t paint little pigs,” he was shouting, “and I don’t paint little girls sucking their thumbs and cooing, ‘I’m baby.’ You’ve come to the wrong shop, old man; no offense. I’m an artist; the man you’re looking for is a sign-painter. Good evening.” The door banged in the old gentleman’s face. Jimmie Boy was so enjoying his anger that he didn’t notice that in closing the door he was shutting out his son. When Teddy had been admitted by Jane, he heard his mother’s voice dodging through his father’s laughter like a child through a crowd. “You needn’t have been so sharp with him, Jimmie. He only wanted to buy the kind of pictures you don’t paint You can’t expect every one to understand. Now he’ll go the rounds and talk about you, and you’ll have another enemy. Why do you do it, my silly old pirate?” The old pirate pretended to become suspicious that his wife was trying to lower his standards--trying to persuade him to paint the rubbish that would sell She protested her innocence. Long after Teddy had made his presence known the argument continued, half in banter, half in seriousness. Then it took the familiar turning which led to a discussion of finance.