"Greatorex says you talk Italian like a Dago. Would you care to translate an Italian novel for us? We’ll pay you sixty pounds."
Conquest handed him the proof sheets of the novel.
"You must translate with discretion," he said carelessly; "but don’t emasculate it! After all, we are not publishing for schoolgirls."
Mark left Paternoster Row, and mounted a ’bus in St. Paul’s Churchyard. When he had taken his seat, he looked at the sheets and began to read them very rapidly. Tommy Greatorex was waiting for him at the Scribblers.
"Has Conquest given you Nespoli’s novel?"
"It’s in my pocket," said Mark, rather red in the face. "And it ought to be in the public sewer. I shan’t translate it."
"Phew-w-w!" said Tommy. "What’s the use of being so bally particular? What did he offer? Seventy-five? Oh, sixty—the Shylock. Well, old chap, if you don’t take the job, somebody else will."
"There’s not a particle of doubt about that," said Mark.
But when he returned the novel to Conquest, he saw that he had offended the great man, who shrugged his shoulders and said curtly that Mark had better buy a little lamb and play with it. This was too much. Mark flamed.
"I’ve stood your sneers long enough, Conquest," he said. "You’ve done me some good turns——"
"Hold on," said Conquest, black and grim. "Don’t flatter yourself that I did them for you. You are the brother of Archibald Samphire, and that’s about the only claim you have to _my_ consideration. Now then—march!"
He pointed insolently to the door, towering above the slight figure confronting him. Mark recovered his temper.
"I’d hit you," he said politely, "if you were smaller, but I can’t reach your brazen face, you b-b-bully and b-b-blusterer. And I couldn’t injure your thick skin with an axe."
The door between the sanctum and the room where the typewriters were clicking stood ajar. When Mark ended his sentence a sound of giggling was heard. Conquest, cursing, turned and kicked the door with violence. Mark laughed and disappeared, leaving an unscrupulous enemy behind him.
Misfortune, however, introduces us to friends as well as enemies. Mark had been hurt because Jim Corrance had not repeated his visit to Weybridge. Jim, he had said to himself, was cold, absorbed in money-getting, unmindful even of his mother, dear soul, who must often yearn for the companionship of her son. But when Jim heard of the Squire’s will, he rushed down to Weybridge, taking with him an enormous hamper. Mark told Betty what passed.