Cocky listened quietly, because it was diverting to see his wife so displeased and to hear her so incoherent. He liked her to be “in a wax”; he hated to think things went as smoothly as they usually did go with her; but he saw the gravity of the dilemma. If Otterbourne would not have the Massarenes, then he and she would be like the farm-girl of fable--“_Adieu, veau vache cochons canvée!_” There might even ensue inquiries from high places, and rebuffs which even the talent of Richemont would not avert. Cocky, to whom the talent of Richemont was agreeable (he lunched and dined whenever he chose at Harrenden House), and more agreeable the master of Richemont (who accepted his signature as if it were Rothschild’s), saw that this was one of those exceptional occasions on which he would do better for himself to side with the mother of the four little poppets upstairs. “I’ll see pater about the thing if you’re so set on it,” he said, with unusual amiability. “Can you do anything?” she said doubtfully and sullenly. “Well, I don’t know. I’ll tell him Billy’s reforming me--making an honest man of me in Fleet Street, and that he’ll damage me if he shuts his doors on the beggars. Perhaps he’ll believe it, perhaps he won’t; I’ll try.” “I’ve sent them their cards; tell him so.” “That wouldn’t move him a jot; but when I do the eldest son rather well, and make believe to see the errors of my ways, I can get a thing or two out of Poodle--sometimes. After all----” After all, thought Cocky, there had been days, though it seemed odd enough to think so now, when he had been a clean and pretty little child jumping up on to his father’s knee. The duke thought of those far-away days oftener than he did, and Cocky was never ashamed to _exploiter_ the remembrance to base ends. “Go at once, then,” said his wife ungraciously. Cocky nodded. But when he had reached the door he looked back between the curtains, a rather diabolic grin upon his thin fair features. “I won’t tell pater you sold Blair Airon instead of selling Black Hazel. Ain’t I magnanimous?” He disappeared, whilst the Blenheims barked shrilly at his memory. Cocky turned into his own den and strengthened his courage with an “eye-opener” of the strongest species; then he took his way to his father’s mansion looking on St. James’s Park--a beautiful and majestic house built by Christopher Wren, and coveted ardently by an hotel company. As he spun along the streets in a hansom, for Cocky never went a yard on foot if he could help it, he changed his intended tactics; the reformation dodge would not do; the duke, who could on occasion be disagreeably keen-sighted, would inevitably discover beneath it accepted bills and unworthy obligations. “I’ll touch him up in his loyalty,” he thought. “The Poodle’s a Cavalier in his creeds.”