“Let him up. No--wait.... Tell him I’ll see him in half an hour.” Gentle reader, you are about to learn why in that controversy over settlements _I_ abruptly abandoned the struggle and yielded everything. I worked with Markham at my mail and telegrams for three quarters of an hour before I let Dawkins in. I saw at a glance that my treatment of him had produced the effect I had hoped. He was a typical middle-class Englishman--but all middle-class Englishmen are typical. He was fattish and baldish and smug. He had a beef-and-beer face, ruddy and smooth except tufts of red-gray, curling whiskers before either ear. He had cold, shrewd, pious eyes--the eyes of the hypocrite who serves the Lord with every breath he draws, and gets a blessing upon every crime he commits before committing it. In my first interviews with him I, being new to England, had made the mistake of treating him as an equal, that is, as a human being. My respect for myself forbids me to meet any of my fellow-members of the human race in any other fashion. But experience has taught me that in doing business with a man, it is being absolutely necessary that you dominate him unless you are willing to have him dominate you, the most skillful care must be taken to impress him with your superiority. A certain amount of “side” is useful in America. A lot of it is imperative in England; and if you are dealing with an Englishman who feels that he is low, you dare not treat him as an equal or he at once imagines you are lower than he, and despicable--and you can do nothing with him. I had suffered, and so had my lawyer, Norman, for our American way of treating Dawkins. I appreciated my mistake afterwards, and resolved not to repeat it. I studied the manner of Crossley and Blankenship and the other upper-class men toward the middle and lower classes, and I learned to copy it, an accomplishment of which I am not proud, though common sense forbids me to be ashamed of it. Dawkins, entering with heels thoroughly cooled, made ready to put out his hand, but did so hesitatingly. He saw that his worst fears were realized, altered the handshaking gesture into a tug at his right whiskers. Nor did I offer him a seat, but simply looked at him pleasantly over the top of my newspaper and said: “Ah, Dawkins, is that you?” “Good morning, Mr. Loring. Hope you are well, sir,” said Dawkins, now squeezing awkwardly into his proper place. I half turned my back on him and dictated a note and a telegram to Markham. Then I glanced at Dawkins again. “Ah, Dawkins, yes--what were you saying?” “I would esteem it a favor, sir, if you would give me a few minutes of your time--alone.” “We are alone,” said I. “What is it?” The solicitor shifted his portly frame uneasily, smoothed his top hat with his gloved left hand, glanced dubiously at Markham. “The matter is confidential, sir--relating to--to the family.”