"But you'd like some four, five, six thousand to help you out, hey? That's what you've been waiting here for?"
"You said you'd help me, sir."
Ellis turned his unchanged scowl on Mrs. Harmon. "Better drop him, Lydia," he said. "He's an eternal fool."
"Stephen," she cried indignantly, "have you lost money, too? More than he has, I'm sure." He sneered, and she added, "Something's gone wrong with you, then, to make you so rude."
His frown became blacker still; he had been walking the streets, and came here in the hope of distraction only to be reminded of Judith. "Hold your tongue, Lydia," he said roughly. Then he surveyed Jim once more. "You little fool, get out of your scrape by yourself!" Grasping his hat as if he would crush its brim, he turned to go.
"Don't come again, Stephen," she flung after him, "until you've found your temper."
Yet the last glimpse of Ellis, as he departed, gave distress to poor Jim. "Why," he said helplessly, as the outer door closed. "Why, Mrs. Harmon, he—he said he'd help me!"
But such common preoccupations as money-difficulties were, at this moment, foreign to Mrs. Harmon's mood. Jim had stirred her blood, she was glad that Ellis had gone. Now she moved nearer to the young man, so that the space between them was free. "Never mind," she said lightly.
"Never mind?" repeated Jim. "But Mrs. Harmon, I've——" No, he couldn't tell her. Yet what should he do?
"Leave business for the daytime," she said. "Forget the mill; forget the office." She came nearer still.