Before their young friend was liberated there came a thump at the door communicating with the staircase, followed by the apparition of a dripping youth who poked in his head.Pemberton recognised him as the bearer of a telegram and recognised the telegram as addressed to himself.Morgan came back as, after glancing at the signature - that of a relative in London - he was reading the words: "Found a jolly job for you, engagement to coach opulent youth on own terms.Come at once." The answer happily was paid and the messenger waited.Morgan, who had drawn near, waited too and looked hard at Pemberton; and Pemberton, after a moment, having met his look, handed him the telegram.It was really by wise looks - they knew each other so well now - that, while the telegraph-boy, in his waterproof cape, made a great puddle on the floor, the thing was settled between them.Pemberton wrote the answer with a pencil against the frescoed wall, and the messenger departed.When he had gone the young man explained himself.
"I'll make a tremendous charge; I'll earn a lot of money in a short time, and we'll live on it.""Well, I hope the opulent youth will be a dismal dunce - he probably will - " Morgan parenthesised - "and keep you a long time a-hammering of it in.""Of course the longer he keeps me the more we shall have for our old age.""But suppose THEY don't pay you!" Morgan awfully suggested.
"Oh there are not two such - !" But Pemberton pulled up; he had been on the point of using too invidious a term.Instead of this he said "Two such fatalities."Morgan flushed - the tears came to his eyes."Dites toujours two such rascally crews!" Then in a different tone he added: "Happy opulent youth!""Not if he's a dismal dunce."
"Oh they're happier then.But you can't have everything, can you?"the boy smiled.
Pemberton held him fast, hands on his shoulders - he had never loved him so."What will become of you, what will you do?" He thought of Mrs.Moreen, desperate for sixty francs.
"I shall become an homme fait." And then as if he recognised all the bearings of Pemberton's allusion: "I shall get on with them better when you're not here.""Ah don't say that - it sounds as if I set you against them!""You do - the sight of you.It's all right; you know what I mean.
I shall be beautiful.I'll take their affairs in hand; I'll marry my sisters.""You'll marry yourself!" joked Pemberton; as high, rather tense pleasantry would evidently be the right, or the safest, tone for their separation.
It was, however, not purely in this strain that Morgan suddenly asked: "But I say - how will you get to your jolly job? You'll have to telegraph to the opulent youth for money to come on."Pemberton bethought himself."They won't like that, will they?""Oh look out for them!"
Then Pemberton brought out his remedy."I'll go to the American Consul; I'll borrow some money of him - just for the few days, on the strength of the telegram."Morgan was hilarious."Show him the telegram - then collar the money and stay!"Pemberton entered into the joke sufficiently to reply that for Morgan he was really capable of that; but the boy, growing more serious, and to prove he hadn't meant what he said, not only hurried him off to the Consulate - since he was to start that evening, as he had wired to his friend - but made sure of their affair by going with him.They splashed through the tortuous perforations and over the humpbacked bridges, and they passed through the Piazza, where they saw Mr.Moreen and Ulick go into a jeweller's shop.The Consul proved accommodating - Pemberton said it wasn't the letter, but Morgan's grand air - and on their way back they went into Saint Mark's for a hushed ten minutes.Later they took up and kept up the fun of it to the very end; and it seemed to Pemberton a part of that fun that Mrs.Moreen, who was very angry when he had announced her his intention, should charge him, grotesquely and vulgarly and in reference to the loan she had vainly endeavoured to effect, with bolting lest they should "get something out" of him.On the other hand he had to do Mr.Moreen and Ulick the justice to recognise that when on coming in they heard the cruel news they took it like perfect men of the world.
