"I know it does, my dear, and there's the pathetic splendour of it," Poppy declared, soft mothering tones in her voice. "All the same we must keep our heads screwed on the right way. So, tell me, will it be of any personal advantage to you to help pull these elderly plungers out of the quagmire?" "None whatever." "At least they will make it worth your while by paying up handsomely?" "No doubt they will make me some offer, but I shall decline it," Iglesias said. "I draw a pension. I will continue to do so. That is just. I have a right to it in virtue of my past work. But I shall refuse to accept any salary over and above that. I shall make it a condition that I give my services. And that which I give I give, whether it be to king or to beggar. To make profit out of my giving would be intolerable to me." Poppy mused, her head bent, pushing away the tiny dogs with her foot as they fawned upon her. "Don't bother! you little miseries," she said, "don't bother! I'm busy now. I've no use for you." Presently she glanced up at Mr. Iglesias, who held himself proudly, as he stood waiting before her. "Do you care for these barking people? Is it a question of affection between any of them and you?" "I am afraid not," he answered. "Ours has been a purely business connection throughout. How should it be otherwise? The social interval between employers and employed is not easily bridged." "Stuff-a-nonsense!" Poppy put in scornfully. "They might feel honoured to tie your shoe." "Any attempt to ignore differences of wealth and station, which others are pleased to remember, would be unbecoming," he continued. "Nor do I relish condescension on the part of my social betters. It does not suit me. I prefer to remain within my own borders. Still, there is the tie of long association with these merchant princes and their undertakings, and this, I own, influences me strongly. It would be shocking to me to witness the failure or ruin of those with whom I have been in daily intercourse. Then, too, there is a certain challenge in the present position which appeals to the fighting instinct in me. If not altogether by nature, still by habit I am a business man. Affairs interest me, and consequently the more embarrassed and apparently hopeless the existing state of things is, the greater would be my satisfaction in mastering the intricacies of it and reducing them to order. These practical matters are not without very real excitement and drama to those who have the habit of handling them." Iglesias paused, and then added quietly, "But I am contented enough as I am, and should not voluntarily have touched business again had there not been another consideration over and above those I have enumerated--namely, the plain obligation of right doing, whether the said doing be congenial to one or not. This obligation is supreme, or should be so, in the case of one who, like myself, has bound himself by definite acts of obedience and self-dedication."