Tod never knew when Edwin Rook blabbed of the affair at Melling Gap. He did not see the man again till the Monday, and Rook went discreetly about his business while Mr. Flowerdew was in the shop. There was a sale at a house in Virginia Gardens, at eleven, and Mr. Flowerdew had decided to attend it in quest of possible bargains.

Tod was extricating some books from under a mahogany sideboard when a man’s hand struck him a resounding whack from behind.

“Hallo, Don Juan!”

Tod faced round. He had never known Rook to indulge in playfulness, and there had been a vicious sting in that smack.

“Chuck that!”

“Well, Don Juan, how’s life?”

“What d’you mean?” said Tod.

Rook looked at him in a queer, mocking way, and began to rearrange some china.

“Don’t be a young fool, that’s all,” he remarked suggestively.

Tod was getting red and combative.

“You keep your jokes to yourself, Rook.”

“Right-o, my lad, I shall. Why don’t you pick up a kid of fifteen; that’s about your size.”

“Look here, you shut up,” said Tod, “don’t you say anything about Miss Kitty Flowerdew.”

Rook turned on him with an insolent laugh, and bobbed a china cow up and down in front of Tod’s face.

“Moo-moo, cocky! The boy’s on his dignity, by Jove! Why, you cuckoo, she’s only practising on you.”

“She’s not,” said Tod fiercely. “She’s not that sort of girl.”

Mr. Rook addressed himself confidentially to the china cow.

“Hark at him, old girl. He knows all about you women. He’s a regular man about town; Beautiful Bountiful Bertie, what! All done by kindness at the age of eighteen.”

“I’m old enough to punch your head, anyhow,” said Tod.

And then Edwin Rook left him alone.

The man had all the cleverness of a mean beast who was jealous, and in three days he had Tod helplessly and hopelessly enraged. The lad soon discovered that there was some conspiracy between Lena Flowerdew and the shopman. Rook had blabbed to the elder sister, and Miss Flowerdew had told her father. And Tod saw that it was Kitty who was in disgrace. The condemnation of that moral household was emptied upon her head, while Tod was made to feel a silly young fool. The girl had her hair up; she was old enough to know better.

But the true maliciousness of the two conspirators betrayed itself when Eli Flowerdew happened to be out to meals. Lena hated her sister and wanted to hurt her; Rook hated Tod and wanted to disgust the girl with her lover by making the affair ridiculous and paltry.

“Going to do a little more practising to-day, dear? Why not take Mr. Western to Melling Gap?”

Rook adopted a jocular tone and pretended to be very much afraid of Tod.

“Western’s a terrible fellow. I’d advise any girl to be careful of Western. He’s a fascinator. He’ll be the Shah of Shaston, and you’ll hear him boasting about it too.”

Tod, conscious of Kitty’s miserable and abashed face, and remembering that he had heard loud voices, and had caught her rushing upstairs in tears, did all that a shrewd boy could do by keeping the remnants of his temper, and accepting the business as a joke. His hatred of Lena Flowerdew was so fierce that he could not save himself from one or two frank and deadly tilts at her, and perhaps he hurt her more bitterly than he knew.

“Nice place, Melling Gap, Mr. Western. Suppose you take me there next Saturday? Mr. Rook will look after Kitty.”

Tod was getting tired of the vulgarity of the thing.

“No, thank you,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t like ugly women.”

Lena Flowerdew gave him one glare of the eyes, and laid that saying to her sister’s credit.

Tod was alone in the room behind the shop that evening, sorting some second-hand books that had been bought at a sale, when the door opened and Kitty slipped in. They happened to be alone in the house for ten minutes, and Kitty had waited for that chance.

“Tod——”

She stood there, downcast, dismayed, and he could see that she had been weeping.

“Tod, don’t speak to Lena like that, dear, please.”

“Why not? And I couldn’t help it.”

“For my sake, don’t. You don’t know how horrible Lena can be. And Father——”

She had more to tell him, but her heart failed her, as her courage failed her in that moment of trial.

“You don’t understand, Tod, how miserable they can make me.”

Tod’s love could hold back no longer. Here was his most dear lady, persecuted, humiliated, and all because of her kindness to him.

“Kitty! You know I love you, Kitty. I can’t stand them being such beasts to you.”

He crossed over to her, his blue eyes alight, and tried to take her hands, but she put them behind her suddenly, and began to weep anew.

“Tod, dear——”

“Why shouldn’t we be engaged? I’m eighteen. And there’s no one——”

“Don’t, Tod, oh—don’t—please,” she said brokenly. “You don’t understand—and I—I can’t tell you. Father would be so angry, and they would just mock at you.”

“I’m not afraid of that, dear.”

“It can’t be. And I have to ask you, Tod, not to look at me or talk to me much. We can be just friends——”

“I see how it is,” he said sturdily, “they think I’m a silly kid, and that I can’t be serious. If you would wait for me, Kitty.”

“I can’t, Tod, dear, I can’t. Father wouldn’t let me.”

“I’ll—I’ll make him,” but she fled out of the room and away up the dark stairs, and Tod could hear her sobbing as she went.

Tod was puzzled, but he suppressed the hot chivalry of his youth and the desire to do something heroic. The Flowerdews’ house was not a tilting ground for heroism, and the more Tod pondered the matter, the less sanguine he felt. Sir Galahad would have been met here with ridicule and a shower of rotten eggs. The lad began to understand Kitty’s sensitive dread and her shrinking from the malicious vulgarities of her sister’s tongue.

Tod made up his mind to dissemble. If it helped Kitty and saved her from further domestic storms, so much the better. He told himself that he would wait. In three years he would have that £1,000, and could talk to Mr. Eli Flowerdew as one man to another. And he found that his self-suppression, cheerfully and shrewdly advertised, had a very distinct influence upon the other members of the Flowerdew family. He talked more to Lena Flowerdew and made it his business to pass her the butter and the jam, and actually allowed her to take him out to a tea-party at the Lagos’s who ran a big grocery shop in King William Street.

Eli Flowerdew seemed to have made up his mind to approve of Tod, and Tod encouraged that spirit of approval, even though it led him into the dismal experience of being enrolled as a junior member of the local Social Purity League. Eli Flowerdew took him to the men’s Wednesday evening meetings in the Shaston Public Hall, where he listened to sacred music as rendered by the Shaston Glee Singers, and heard sundry eloquent gentlemen give flamboyant addresses upon civic and domestic virtue.

The whole crowd made Tod think of a lot of unwholesome people getting into a stuffy corner and solemnly holding their noses because of the smell. They were so drearily unhuman and self-complacent. Tod had a feeling that they rather liked smells, and enjoyed holding their noses, and gloating self-righteously over the iniquity of the other people’s drains.

He asked Bod Twine about it, because he had come to regard that swarthy young man as violently and savagely honest.

“I don’t see that it does anybody any good,” he argued.

“Course it doesn’t kid. It’s like telling a chap who’s healthy that he’s got a worm. They like it, you know—makes ’em feel warm and good inside like a glass of gin; they don’t want things to be different, not really. Get outside; that’s my motto.”

“Outside what?”

“Why, out into the country, you pippin. There’s nothing wrong with the sea, or the fields, or the open road, is there? And there’s nothing wrong with a chap wanting to be in love with a girl. If so, what are we here for? If a man tries to come the pious over me, I always think he has got dirty feet. Say, when are you going to join our footer club?”

Twine had taught Tod to swim; he also taught him to box, and young Western began to be one of the pets of the local football club. He had shaped well as a half-back at Chipperton’s, and before Christmas he was playing right-half for Shaston Town, and was beloved of the local crowd. “Worry-’em-Western” was his nickname, and even Mr. Flowerdew approved. It was an advertisement. “That’s young Western from Flowerdew’s.” The commercial eye sees a placard everywhere, and pastes up a pious “poster” whenever it looks publicly upon its God.

Yet even Clarence Todhunter Western had his worries. The Flowerdews household had made inroads on his youth, and changed him from the irresponsible boy to the young man who was finding life rather a queer and puzzling business. His silent and restrained loyalty to Kitty made him all the more jealous and observant. He began to notice that Edwin Rook was always sneaking out of the shop and into the house when Eli Flowerdew was not about. He noticed, too, that Rook’s eyes were for ever watching Kitty during meals, but that she hardly ever looked at him in return. Rook seemed to frighten her and to reduce her to silence. Moreover, Miss Lena Flowerdew grew very snappy and sarcastic towards the shopman, and Tod caught her watching him trying to ingratiate himself with her sister. Miss Flowerdew’s face was never very pleasant or amiable, but on those occasions Tod thought her the ugliest thing he had ever seen.

Then Edwin Rook took to attending St. Jude’s church and sat in the Flowerdew pew, displacing Tod, who was pushed to the far end by the pillar. Tod was annoyed but contemptuous. He had a healthy scorn for Rook, a fellow who wore glasses, never played any games, and was, Tod suspected, a physical coward. Tod, the romanticist, blindly refused to accept Rook as a serious rival, which wild faith of his betrayed how ignorant he was of the real inwardness of the Flowerdew family.

But it was the shop and the business that were puzzling the sportsman in Tod. You bought as cheaply as you could and you sold as dearly as you could; that seemed fairly obvious and reasonable, and yet Tod was not satisfied. When some old woman received three and sixpence for an article which Mr. Flowerdew sold to a wealthy stockbroker’s wife three days later for five guineas, the gap seemed too greedy. Tod began to see a good deal of this buying and selling, and it left him with an uneasy and guilty feeling. Also it became very plain to him that in a shop you were not supposed to tell the truth. You romanced, you exaggerated—in short, you lied.

“Those candlesticks, madam? Yes, we picked them up only a week ago and at a fancy price. They won’t remain with us very long; the first connoisseur who sees them——”

Now Tod knew that these candlesticks had been bought at a sale three months ago, and that Mr. Flowerdew had given exactly seven shillings for them. The lady, a visitor to Shaston, bought them for three pounds ten.

Moreover, for subtle reason known only to himself, Edwin Rook set himself to try and debauch and commercialise Tod. He was cynical, jocular, and facetious, and he took a delight in airing all the trade cynicisms, and flaunting them in front of Tod’s eyes.

“You’ve got to watch your customer, my lad. If it’s a ‘regular’ and one who knows a bit, go easy. If it’s a stranger, why then you can do a bit of fibbing and push the price.”

“Be jolly careful of duchessy looking ladies in fine clothes. They don’t swallow things easily. They can be really nasty if they think you have cheated them.”

“Always back down and eat dirt if you are found out.”

“Expert knowledge! What do we want to know for? Why, it’s the whole game. You can score off the people who don’t know, get ’em to take sixpence for something that’s worth a quid. That’s business.”

“Sentiment. There’s no sentiment in a shop. Only oil, my boy, oil.”

Tod disliked Rook all the more thoroughly for these cynicisms of his. At first, he did not take them too seriously. Rook was a glib talker, rather pleased with his own cleverness, but as the weeks went by, Tod began to realise that Rook was telling him the truth. The discovery depressed Tod very seriously. He felt that he was getting mixed up in a sordid sort of game, a game in which your main endeavour was to cheat. Tod called it “cheating” to himself, quite frankly and with no reservations. If you tried to foul in the football field, the referee dropped on you, and the crowd, if it was not too bigoted a crowd, hooted.

And then came the incident of that book.

Mr. Flowerdew had been present at one of those “sales of necessity.” A doctor had died and left a widow and three children, and a small balance at the bank. Mr. Flowerdew bought a few lots at the sale, and among them an odd number of books that cost him thirteen shillings. Tod was sorting these books two days after the sale when he came across a queer old volume that sent him running for Messrs. Porteous’s price catalogue of second-hand books.

There seemed no doubt about it. That particular book was valued at fifteen guineas.

Tod, full of enthusiasm, announced the fact to Rook.

“I say, there’s been a mistake. We have bought a valuable book mixed up in a lot of rubbish.”

“Where’s the mistake?” asked the shopman with cynical sangfroid.

“But the governor only paid thirteen bob for the lot, and this book is priced at fifteen guineas. The people who sold it didn’t know. We shall have to send it back.”

“Do what?” squealed Mr. Rook.

“Why, send it back. It wouldn’t be fair or sporting to keep it. I don’t suppose Flowerdew knew when he bought the lot.”

Rook stared at Tod, and then gave a queer laugh.

“Suggest it, old chap. If the auctioneers didn’t do their work properly, and the governor had the luck——”

“You mean you’d keep it and say nothing?”

“You soft egg!” said Mr. Rook.

Tod was challenged. He said nothing more to Rook, but waited for Mr. Flowerdew to give a judgment of Solomon. Rook was out when the interview occurred, and he missed one of the most cynical comedies that had ever been played in Mr. Flowerdew’s shop.

“Excuse me, sir, but you bought a valuable book the other day by mistake.”

Mr. Flowerdew was totting up some figures in a notebook, and he looked at Tod with interested approval.

“What’s that, Western? You are learning to use your wits, are you? What about it?”

Tod explained, and Eli Flowerdew listened with fatherly satisfaction until Tod made the extraordinary suggestion that the book should be returned.

Mr. Flowerdew’s thin lips slipped back over his yellow teeth.

“Say that again, Western?”

Tod said it again.

And then Eli Flowerdew gave Tod a solemn and biblical description of what business was and how it should be conducted. He expatiated on the necessity for loyalty between master and assistant, and how that his—Mr. Flowerdew’s—interest was Tod’s. He trounced Tod’s sentimental obtuseness, and assured him that commerce and civilisation would be impossible if people behaved in the way Tod had suggested.

“You have got to get the business spirit, Western,” he said grimly, “if you want to rise in this world. Competition doesn’t say ‘After you, please.’ If you hold yourself responsible for other peoples mistakes, you are a fool, young man. Don’t you mix sentiment and business. And don’t let me hear any more of this nonsense.”