While she was upon her errand no—words passed between the two. Mr. Marrapit took the glass from her in shaking hands. “Leave us,” he said. He drank of his barley water; placed the glass upon the bench beside him; gave George a wan smile. “I am stricken in years,” he said. “I have passed through a trance or conscious nightmare. You will have had experience of such affections of the brain. I thought”—the hideous memory shook him—“I thought you asked me for five hundred pounds.”
George said defiantly: “I did.”
Mr. Marrapit frantically reached for the barley water; feverishly gulped. “I shall have a stroke,” he cried. “My hour is at hand.”
My poor George flung himself on a note of appeal. “Oh, I say, uncle, don't go on like that! You don't know what this means to me.”
“I do not seek to know. I am too fully occupied with its consequences to myself; it means a stroke. I feel it coming. My tomb yawns.”
George gripped together his hands; paced a few strides; returned. “Oh, for heaven's sake, don't go on like that! Won't you listen to me? Is it impossible to speak with you as man to man? If you refuse what I ask, you have only to say no.”
“You promise that?”
“Of course; of course.”
“I say it now, then. No.”
“But you haven't heard me.”