He wrote to Hal that day, tentatively accepting the offer. Hal made an appointment for his lordly tenant, and fumed for three hours in his city office until Tuppy turned up. "I say!" said the aggrieved Hal ostentatiously displaying his watch; "I say, Tuppy, old man, dash it! You said eleven and it’s two! Hang it all!" "Don’t be peevish," begged the peer, "if I’d said two it would have been five." "Time is money," complained Hal. "Wise old bird," said Tuppy earnestly, "your interestin’ and perfectly original apothegm merely elucidates my position. It’s the habit of years to overdraw my account." Hal who had no soul for subtle reasoning, plunged into the object of the meeting. "The fact is, Tuppy," he said, leaning back in his padded chair, and cocking one leg on to the desk before him, "the fact is," he repeated, "there’s a man, a Duke man, that the governor’s anxious to run out of Brockley." "Dear, dear!" commented Tuppy with polite interest. "He’s not one of our dukes: he’s a French Duke from America, and he’s been acting the goat and getting upsides with the governor and blithering generally—do you understand." "Very pithily put," murmured Tuppy, "the whole situation is revealed in one illuminatin’ flash." "Very good," said Hal complacently. "Well, being in the suburbs—the Duke—and the suburbs being——" "In the suburbs," suggested the helpful Tuppy as Hal paused for an illustration. "Exactly .... It stands to reason that a lot of these bounders have gone in for a sort of hero-worship. See?" Tuppy nodded slowly. "The fact being," explained Hal, "that these suburban people are such absolute rotters and—and——" "Pifflers?" suggested Tuppy. "And pifflers and outsiders—that was the word I wanted—that they really don’t know the genuine article from the spurious." "Very natural," Tuppy agreed. "So the governor and I (it was really my idea but you know what sort of chap the governor is for adopting other people’s ideas as his own), we thought a good idea would be, to plant one of the genuine article right in their midst, so that they could see for themselves the sort of Johnny the other chap was." "I see," said Tuppy thoughtfully, "sort of look on this picture-an’-look-on-that, compare the genuine goods before patronizin’ rival establishments?" "Tuppy," said Hal with solemn admiration, "you’ve got the whole thing in a nut-shell." Tuppy picked up his hat and examined it intently. "No bet," he said. "Eh?" Hal could hardly believe his ears. "No bet," said Tuppy with decision, "awfully obliged to you for the offer and all that; but no bet." "Why not—you get a house rent free; the governor furnishes it from Baring’s, you get five hundred——" "The five hundred is badly wanted," admitted Tuppy sadly, "an’ if anything would tempt me, it would be five hundred of the brightest and best, but, Tanny, old chick, it can’t be done." "But why not?" protested Hal. Tuppy was still examining his hat.