id Mr. Stephen, stepping forward. "What's the use
of all this? The thing's perfectly plain. I did tell Woodden to buy the
plant at any price. What is more I gave him a written authority which
was passed up to the auctioneer. There's no getting out of it. It
is true it never occurred to me that it would go for anything like
L2,300--the odd L300 was more my idea, but Woodden only obeyed his
orders, and ought not to be abused for doing so."

"There's what I call a master worth serving," remarked Woodden.

"Very well, young man," said Sir Alexander, "you have purchased this
article. Will you be so good as to tell me how you propose it should be
paid for."

"I propose, father, that you should pay for it," replied Mr. Stephen
sweetly. "Two thousand three hundred pounds, or ten times that amount,
would not make you appreciably poorer. But if, as is probable, you take
a different view, then I propose to pay for it myself. As you know a
certain sum of money came to me under my mother's will in which you have
only a life interest. I shall raise the amount upon that security--or
otherwise."

If Sir Alexander had been angry before, now he became like a mad bull
in a china shop. He pranced round the room; he used language that should
not pass the lips of any respectable merchant of bullion; in short, he
did everything that a person in his position ought not to do. When he
was tired he rushed to a desk, tore a cheque from a book and filled it
in for a sum of L2,300 to bearer, which cheque he blotted, crumpled up
and literally threw at the head of his son.

"You worthless, idle young scoundrel," he bellowed. "I put you in this
office here that you may learn respectable and orderly habits and in due
course succeed to a very comfortable business. What happens? You don't
take a ha'porth of interest in bullion-broking, a subject of which I
believe you to remain profoundly ignorant. You don't even spend your
money, or rather my money, upon any gentleman-like vice, such as
horse-racing, or cards, or even--well, never mind. No, you take to
flowers, miserable, beastly flowers, things that a cow eats and clerks
grow in back gardens."

"An ancient and Arcadian taste. Adam is supposed to have lived in a
garden," I ventured to interpolate.

"Perhaps you would ask your friend with the stubbly hair to remain
quiet," snorted Sir Alexander. "I was about to add, although for the
sake of my name I meet your debts, that I have had enough of this