Dill laid her plan--their plan--before two or three of his own guild, experimentally. They gaped at it as a plainsman would gape at the Himalayas. Nor was it, as has been said, the smallest of mouthfuls to himself. However, the distinguished assistance of a young woman of fashion, means and cultivation was not a matter to hide under a bushel; besides, some firm, concrete scheme must be put promptly before the Nine Old Men of the Bank before they should have glued their desires undetachably upon some crude, preposterous plan of their own. "It would cost like smoke," said Giles, "but it's an idea." "Let's try it on," said the Academy professor. "It would show us as on deck and would help us to take their measure. Who knows but it might be the means of staving off a series of medallion portraits of the board themselves!" "An idea, yes," reiterated Giles. "But it lays out a terrible lot of work for us. Such a job would be enormous." "Tackle it," said Abner Joyce. He claimed as a matter of course the right to be present at such conferences. Joyce himself had the strength and the pluck to tackle anything. "Well, _let's_ try it on," assented Giles. "We've got to cut in first, that's sure--if we can. Come, let's put out our feelers." This was more or less in harmony with Virgilia's parting advice. "Show them to themselves in historical perspective," she had suggested to Dill in bidding him good-night at the front door,--"the last link in one long, glittering chain. Flatter them; associate them with the Romans and Venetians--bring in the Assyrians if need be. Tell them how the Bardi and the Peruzzi ruled the roost in old Florence. Work in Sir Thomas Gresham and the Royal Exchange--ruffs, rapiers, farthingales, Drake, Shakespeare and the whole 'spacious' time of Elizabeth. Make them a part of the poetry of it--make them a part of the picturesqueness of it. That will bring Mr. Gibbons around easily enough, and ought to budge two or three of the others." Daffingdon took his great scheme to the bank, but it failed to charm. Andrew P. Hill poked at Daffingdon's neatly drawn-up memorandum with a callous finger and blighted it with an indifferent look out of a lack-lustre eye. The _mensarii_ of Rome and the trapezites of Athens seemed a long way off. The picturesque beginnings of the Bank of Genoa left him cold. The raid of the Stuart king on the Tower mint appeared to have very little to do with the case. And Jeremiah McNulty, who happened to be about the premises, showed himself but slightly disposed to fan Hill's feeble interest to a flame. "This is not just what we want," said Hill. "It is not at all what any of us had in mind. It is very little in accord, I must say, with the ideas I gave you last week. I don't think it will do. Still, if you want to get up some drawings to show about how it would come out, and bring them around in a week or so...."