“Auguthuth,” was the curt comment of his partner, “you're a fool.”

“All right, my boy, you try,” suggested Augustus.

“Jutht what I mean to do,” asserted his partner.

“Well,” demanded Augustus one evening later, meeting Isidore ascending the stairs after a long talk with the stranger in the dining-room with the door shut.

“Oh, don't arth me,” retorted Isidore, “thilly ath, thath what he ith.”

“What did he say?”

“What did he thay! talked about the Jewth: what a grand rathe they were — how people mithjudged them: all that thort of rot.”

“Thaid thome of the motht honorable men he had ever met had been Jewth. Thought I wath one of 'em!”

“Well, did you get anything out of him?”

“Get anything out of him. Of courthe not. Couldn't very well thell the whole rathe, ath it were, for a couple of hundred poundth, after that. Didn't theem worth it.”

There were many things Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square came gradually to the conclusion were not worth the doing — Snatching at the gravy; pouncing out of one's turn upon the vegetables and helping oneself to more than one's fair share; manoeuvering for the easy-chair; sitting on the evening paper while pretending not to have seen it — all such-like tiresome bits of business. For the little one made out of it, really it was not worth the bother. Grumbling everlastingly at one's food; grumbling everlastingly at most things; abusing Pennycherry behind her back; abusing, for a change, one's fellow-boarders; squabbling with one's fellow-boarders about nothing in particular; sneering at one's fellow-boarders; talking scandal of one's fellow-boarders; making senseless jokes about one's fellow-boarders; talking big about oneself, nobody believing one — all such-like vulgarities. Other boarding-houses might indulge in them: Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square had its dignity to consider.