"People are not found out till they are tried."
"Try 'em!"
Mr. Oldways had been sitting with his head bent, thoughtfully, his eyes looking down, his hands on the two stiff, old-fashioned arms of his chair. At this last spondaic response from Marmaduke, he lifted his eyes and eyebrows,—not his head,—and raised himself slightly with his two hands pressing on the chair arms; the keen glance and the half-movement were impulsively toward his friend.
"Eh?" said he.
"Try 'em," repeated Marmaduke Wharne. "Give God's way a chance."
Mr. Oldways, seated back in his chair again, looked at him intently; made a little vibration, as it were, with his body, that moved his head up and down almost imperceptibly, with a kind of gradual assenting apprehension, and kept utterly silent.
So, their talk being palpably over for this time, Marmaduke Wharne got up presently to go. They nodded at each other, friendlily, as he looked back from the door.
Left alone, Mr. Titus Oldways turned in his swivel-chair, around to his desk beside which he was sitting.
"Next of kin?" he repeated to himself. "God's way?—Well! Afterwards is a long time. A man must give it up somewhere. Everything escheats to the king at last."
And he took a pen in his hand and wrote a letter.