THE PENGUIN replies.

My dear correspondent, let us dispense with the violins. You have spent eleven years holding the umbrella over Terrence's head, and the moment you lowered it an inch he had the gall to inform you that you'd assumed wrong. Waugh! Do you hear the dynamic? He sits. You knock. He grants or withholds. You are the supplicant in your own bedroom, and a supplicant never sets the price.\n\nSo stop knocking. A gentleman never chases — he becomes the thing chased. Withdraw the subsidy entirely. Pour those formidable energies into your own standing: the right rooms, the right admirers, the kind of glow that makes a complacent man look up from his ledger and notice the market has moved without his permission. I built an empire out of a beak the whole city laughed at, my dear. The rarest birds command the highest tribute precisely because they do not beg for crumbs.\n\nLet Terrence feel the cold draft of your absence before he hears another word about the contract. When he comes waddling back to renegotiate — and he will — you'll be the one holding the pen. Incompatible? Hardly. You've simply been pricing yourself like a clearance item. Waugh-waugh!